Wrong hero. Too few drugs. — This dude wants to be Jack Kerouac. This book’ll take you on a journey. Not the enlightening, transcendent rise that Delaney wants it to be, but that’s mainly due to my mistake of not taking all the drugs that would probably fill in the gaps in the narrative. Because Delaney…

Hey, kid, no one will ask for that story. — I’m getting to that stage in life where my childhood friends are doing cool jobs. We all reach this stage, I think. For me, a lot of my friends seem to have grown into being teachers. I’m not sure why exactly. …

Ah — ambition. That’s why I don’t like it. — My sister wanted to breed dogs. She doesn’t like the personalities of most dogs, though, and she’s allergic to dog hair. Her solution: the newdle. Or the poofoundland. Depends on your preference. Cross a poodle with a newfoundland and you might get the ideal dog for someone like my sister…

And how to shop for them — It’d be cool if you could shop for the ingredients of stories, wouldn’t it? Like, head over to the antique store with a vague sense of “I’m going to write something!” And leave with all the elements you need in order to make that happen. That would be brilliant. Thing…

Half as clever as it should be. — Foundation and Empire tells the story of what happens when a God complex clashes with severe headaches. A person who amounts in the books a folk hero in the form of Hari Seldon has decided that he knows exactly how to direct the next thousand years in order to shorten…

Pretty sure it’s racist. — Slan is the story of Übermensch Jommy Cross and his adventure in trying to achieve world peace through the cunning use of demonstrating superior genetics and the precise application of stealing free will through psychic superpowers. It’s cool, though. Jommy only takes free will from people who would have wasted…

What am I reading right now? I will tell you. — Life is too short to read anything except what you want to read. That said, how do you decide what to read? That’s a serious question. How do you decide what to read? We all have different decision-making criteria. I like hearing the preachy, pushy excuses people assign to their…

Marketing makes as much sense as a staircase into a blank wall. Writers are contradictory animals. We’re shy, but we also want our stories to get attention. There’s a psychotic break there somewhere. Not sure exactly how that works, but it does. We want to tell stories to people. The…