Fiery Pen

writing

  • 2019 in Review

    Another year has passed. I’m not quite sure how this one managed to fly by so quickly. It feels like I blinked last New Year’s and opened my eyes on the other side of Christmas. Some of this acceleration is my own fault for packing every moment of every day with activities and experiences. It…

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  • Deadly Reality Book Signing

    When I heard there was going to be a horror-themed book signing at The Stanley Hotel, I decided I needed to participate. My first signing experience at Behind the Mask in Nashville was staggeringly disappointing and left me resolved to never try such an event again. The main failure of that experience, as I saw…

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  • When October Tries to Kill You

    Oh, October. October has always been my favorite month. I look forward to it whisking me away from the misery of summer every year, heavily laden with its Halloween festivities. However, I’m skidding out of this October on my face barely a shell of a person. Is there too much of a good thing? I…

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  • And I Kept Writing…

    Yesterday, I got my semicolon tattoo in a now cliche display of suicide and self-harm survival. It was a last minute addition when I was sitting to get flowers added to my seasonal sleeve. The tattoo may be fully mainstream now, hiding on the wrists of strangers all around me, but the metaphor still speaks…

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  • Where the Hell Have You Been?

    Wait, wait… Hold on… It’s July?? How did that happen? I swear it was just May. Where have I been? You’re right. Where the hell have I been lately? May and June passed in a blur of me riding on airplanes, commuting in cars, summoning Ubers, and bouncing around the country. Mostly, it was for the…

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  • Professional and Appropriate

    I’m officially in my mid-thirties; I should be professional and appropriate by now, right? Um… …right? Honestly, I don’t know that I fit into the average subjective definition of either term. However, it has been an idea that has been wriggling around on the skin of my mind lately. I am the parent of two…

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  • My 2017 in Review

    When it comes to the state of the world at large and current events, I am with the majority in being ready and excited to say goodbye (and fuck off) to 2017. What a rollercoaster mess of a year. However, if I refine my focus down to something a little more narcissistic, the assessment of…

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  • The Other Side

    Some days (most days), I do not have time to be crazy. Yet crazy I remain. I just surfaced from the longest depression cycle I can remember since I used to drink all my feelings. Unlike my usual three day lows, this was over a month of symptoms reading like a flyer for depression, which…

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  • Common Themes

    Every writer has common themes around which their brains and hence stories fixate. If you read any author long enough, you will see the same turns of phrase, images, scenarios. You can even chronologically identify a work based on the author’s fixations at the time, like stratifications in an excavation. I am no exception. I…

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  • Am I Becoming a Public Speaker

    As some of you may recall, I recently talked at a couple schools about writing. It started out innocently enough, just volunteering at my daughter’s school as part of their readathon and helping out a friend teaching Technical Writing for the first year. Then a teacher with whom I often share the zumba dance floor…

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