So today finds me two weeks removed from finishing Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends. I’d recently soured on the essay form—figured it was a stopgap between novels, easier to sell than poetry and slightly more relevant. Trouble was I hadn’t found anything that got me excited. Which should be the point, right?

Until this passage leapt from the pages of Chabon’s essay, Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story:

I’d like to believe that, because I read [...]

It’s long overdue, but I’m finally attending this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, which makes me realize how long I’ve wanted to go. I tend to avoid conventions; my first was the BookExpo America in 2005, when Simon & Schuster launched Gods. It was okay, but I was too stressed to take it all in (highlight: dragging my publicist to the Wizards of the Coast booth, where I geeked out on D&D nostalgia with a fellow thirty-something).

In ages past, Comic-Con was [...]

The aesthetic of the absurd provides a clearer critical lens than most cinemaphiles are willing to gaze through. It’s a shame, because for all the criticisms labeling the publishing world as conservative and befuddled, genre continues to rescue the book industry from the highbrow monopoly. Dumas’ swashbuckling masterpieces are hailed as such, Hammett is given his due, and McCarthy’s The Road is the first zombie novel to win a Pulitzer (and one of the most readable books published in the [...]

My next book may be a return to the world of prep schools and precocious teens. It won’t be another “Gothic Tweed” tale as The Buffalo News labeled my first book. But I’ll stick with that label for now because it was so spot-on for Gods, and it suggests my first novel was the harbinger of a new genre. Flattering, of course. Accurate for my next book? Not so much.

Provided I can make it past the first few chapters—the equivalent [...]

I’m both antsy and drained these days, after a year that saw me finish two novels. It might be the weather–the gray days of March in Boston lend credence to that childhood nonsense about lions and lambs. But gray days or not, my persistent ennui is a symptom of an author’s most dreaded time: the creative lull between novels.

I don’t like authors who complain about their jobs so I’ll spare you the hypocrisy and paint a rosy picture of the [...]

The most interesting thing about the 2,000 page report on Pope John Paul II submitted to the Vatican’s Congregation for the “Causes of Saints” (great name) is the saint-making process. One miracle is required for beatification, and a second is required for canonization, which presents the question: Isn’t one miracle enough?

The two-miracle quota speaks to both the rigorous standards of the Vatican and the arbitrary nature of the canonization process. Were I not in the middle of research for my [...]

It took some time to realize my earliest influence was not H.P. Lovecraft as I so proudly announced during my first book tour. It was Gary Gygax. Co-founder of Dungeons & Dragons, sort-of creator of polyhedron dice, and the prototype for  all subsequent Dungeonmaster caricatures (paunchy, bearded, bespectacled). I liked Gygax’s writing better than Tolkien’s, and I still do. So what if D&D’s Treants were obvious rip-offs of LOTR’s Ents. So what if D&D’s orcs were obvious rip-offs of LOTR’s…er, [...]