Visual Narratives
What if ending war forever required starting the biggest one in history?
THE PASSED PAWN (95,000 words) is a completed novel, a suspense thriller, populated with indomitable, off-kilter female characters. Think Killing Eve with less love, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with more punching. You can read the first chapter here.
There is a thing confusedly formed
Born before heaven and earth
Silent and void
It stands alone and does not change
Goes around and does not weary
Capable of giving birth to the world
—Lao-Tzu
The Missing Angel is a work in progress.
When she was a freshman at high school my daughter was asked to write a paper (ten pages, double-spaced) on why she thought a certain famous writer had written a book in the first person. “Weren’t you,” she asked me, “at San Francisco Writers Workshop …
I recently reread Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) and Lewis’s The Monk (1796). Post-modern vs. Gothic or however you want to label them, they speak of the same thing, and they’re both masterpieces. The protagonists, Humbert Humbert and Ambrosio are flawed—as we all are. Okay, perhaps they’re …
Literature should be a transcription of life in all its forms, including the darker parts. Lolita (Nabokov) and The Monk (Lewis) are masterpieces because they’re horrendous and lovely, appealing and tender at the same time, horror stories and love stories simultaneously. They plow the depths …
Nabokov thought fine literature should tickle your palate and tingle your nerves (paraphrasing a bit) but the concept is true. Fine literature should seep in through your skin, lodge in your every cell, and do unmentionable things to your limbic system. When I read Ulysses …
