Comments Off on Essay Hiatus, Collected Rants, & Brazilian Persevs

April was a noticeably poor month for essays ’round these parts. In fact, many of you have noted I didn’t write or publish ANY new essays in April. While I have been podcasting weekly with Mur Lafferty as the Ditch Diggers (and if you haven’t yet checked out the show, you really should. Kameron Hurley describes it as, “the Business of Writing podcast the industry seriously needed.” And we just did our 10th episode with best-selling author Gail Carriger. It’s dynamite), the singular focus of the show doesn’t leave much room to expound on non-writing topics.

And you do love it when I expound.

No, really. You do.

I insist that you do.

And if you’re newly migrating from my Twitter to the site here and have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, in addition to tweets and books I also write essays folks seem to kind of enjoy like this one about grief, which has been my most read/shared non-fiction piece in a while.

I’ve just been busy, folks. Purely busy. I was wrapping up my second contracted book for Tor.com as well as completing an 8k-word short story set in the Sin du Jour universe. I signed on to write a new feature script, which is no small task ever. I’ve been working up detailed pitches for novels and TV series to trot out to those industries. It was tax season. It was my lady’s birthday. Today is our five-year anniversary. The dog ate my homework. I ran out of gas. I was challenged to a duel by a Brazilian persev.

It was a packed 30 days.

So, no new essays in April. I have, however, been hitting Storify pretty hard lately. Perhaps because I haven’t had time to write a new essay, yet the ego-soaked dish towel knotted at the center of my writer brain never stops having ideas it wants to turn into little ready things for many to puzzle over and enjoy.

So here are some Storified rants on a variety of topics you might’ve/probably missed to hold you over till I’m able to get back to essaying.

“Writers Eat Last,” or: When You Can’t Afford to Go Pick Up Your Pulitzer

On The Ridiculous 6: Perpetuating Stereotypes Isn’t “Satire”

Life in the Male Citadels of Sci-Fi

On the Fleeing Felon Myth and Police Peer Toxicity

I’m determined this month will not be so dry as the last one here on the blog, so stay tuned.

— M F’N W