A Modern Guide to Interracial Romance: Love Songs of the Empty Mall
“I can take you at this counter,” says a woman to my wife. “We’re together,” I tell her. I take a credit card out of my phone case and wait to wave it over a handset as a cashier who looks like she’s a high school kid folds clothes and puts them in […]
A Day in the Life of Bipartisan Bandit Trent Lewin
Wake up. There’s shit in my shoes. A diaper in my cereal. But there’s also coffee in my mug, and then it’s in my gut, and after that I don’t care where it goes, as long as it gets its job done, the job it needs to do on my brain, in this age of […]
Where I Write
I woke up this morning, and I couldn’t get out of bed. It was so cold. We don’t keep the house overly warm. It’s expensive and inefficient. My toes were cold. I hate having them under the covers, I suppose that’s the main reason. My office is crazy. It overlooks a food forest, a garden […]
Bollywood vs Western Storytelling
East Meets West Picture this. A musty basement, carpeted, coloured light sconces, leather barstools around a padded bar, bottles sitting on glass shelves. Furnace room off the bottom of the stairs, and a television against the far wall. Two small windows, barely big enough for you to crawl out of. Enter Bollywood, […]
You Cannot Have Kids and Be a Writer
For my friend Matticus, who is raising a young family and striving to write at the same time. I have quite a few kids. Let’s say it’s a number that’s more than three, and they’re all young. I also have an executive-level job that keeps me ridiculously busy, but most importantly, pays the bills. I’ve […]
Novel Review: The Dime, by Mark Paxson
Mark Paxson is an independent self-published author, and, I might add, a champion of independent authors. Trent Lewin, on the other hand, is completely unpublished in terms of novels. Too held up with the concept of traditional publishing to let it go, even though traditional avenues are not terribly receptive to Trent’s brand of weird […]
Cloud Cuckoo Land (A. Doerr): A Hopelessly Incoherent, Aspirational Review
What’s different about modern novels? We’re segmented into genres, commercial tracks that allow for reasonable market placement and expectation of returns. This is the way the business seems to work, the system that’s evolved over time. There’s just no point talking about great books from the past and how they would have fared in the […]
Thief, Liar, Parent
I don’t know how to choose between a heavy duty water gun and a mini replica arcade game. Just get him an app, I think. A gift card so that he can download what he wants. “Are you going to move?” says a little voice. It’s a girl, maybe seven. Brown curls and […]
The Worst Day of My Life
The worst day of your life only happens once. “Are you okay?” she asks, handing me a coffee. I smile, because you can do that even on the worst day of your life. You can drink coffee, too. Drive home without crashing, or hitting anyone. All these things are possible. I […]