Once again calling on the Olympics Committee to adopt my wife's million-dollar idea: an untrained 45 year old named Dave competing as a point of reference in each event

Super excited to have received the following book mail today, from Ryan Rickrode. A great essay collection, and he's got a novel coming out with @unsolicitedpress.bsky.social this April. And hey, would you look at that—my first blurb!

Somehow, I've managed to write 45,000 words this month. Kidding, I know exactly how: a little bit every day, and only trying to make a few of them any good. That's what second drafts are for. Onward!

BICYCLE THIEVES has so many interesting parallels with THE ROAD. Torn landscape, doomed quest, even structure. But while the Man is relentlessly idealized, the most interesting parts of THIEVES are the cracks that appear in the father, and the way those anticipate the ending.

After watching ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (amazing), I've found myself thinking a lot about the way stories view their characters. ONE BATTLE's humor is in the way it looks down its nose at characters, while THERE WILL BE BLOOD operates more at eye-level, for lack of a better term

One of the best teachers I ever had said that, as a writer, reading a bad book was like having someone sneeze in your face

Boy, December me really thought a lot of January me, didn't he?

Here we go… #StrangerThings5

Finally finished Andor and you guys, I don’t know if any of you knew this, but it’s really good

A few more days of outlining and filling the well. Goal is to start draft 1 of a secret project on Jan 1!

Time for the perfect Christmas movie!

Sheesh, weird day to finish rereading The Hunger Games

This is starting to irk me. Rob Reiner 👏 had 👏 four 👏 children 👏

The vacation responder is ON!

can’t wait for Disney to start releasing AI remakes of live action remakes of 11 year old animated films

Seemed a good time to trot out this absolute GEM from the KNIVES OUT screenplay, just after Blanc sees Marta throw up for the first time. "The shortest acceptable beat of concern" is perhaps my favorite description in any screenplay ever written

Drafting is always my least favorite part of the writing process. I’m so much more creative in the editing. EXTREMELY excited to finally reach the end of this draft tomorrow!

me writing

I'm now through the slog-middle portion of the Wheel of Time by switching to audiobook at 2x speed. Pacing problems = solved!

Is it just me or could you make an AWESOME Christmas movie out of the John Travolta Capital One Santa?

Snowman. One week later. Holding on for dear life!

Whoever named their medication SKYRIZI in 2025 obviously doesn’t work with teenagers

The Wicked adaptation lineage is like reverse telephone. Going back to the 1900 Oz Novel, NONE of the adaptations are super faithful to what came before; they all add and subtract freely, but the end result is still surprisingly coherent.

A fun byproduct of living in the robot age is calling your insurance company for roadside assistance and instead listening to an AI bot read you terms and conditions for 20 minutes

Have been frankly stunned by TESS OF THE ROAD by Rachel Hartman. Please, give me more YA fantasy recs!

One time my wife said something about “the little guy that sits on Jabba the Hutt’s lap” and I responded immediately with “you mean Salacious Crumb?” and we both just stared at each other, blinking

Wait, what am I supposed to watch after Stranger Things?

5 miles for the morning, which means 202 for the year! 🏃

I've written 1,000 words a day for almost 2 years now, good or bad, rain or shine. Annoyingly, the words come a lot more easily if I don't try to make them good...

Lots of grumbling lately about audiences failing to "suspend their disbelief." But writing is weaving a spell, creating the conditions in which an audience can more easily give themselves over to the illusion. When craft falls short, the spell gets broken. That's on writers, not audience.

I refuse to believe that the same animals who created a vast, utopian metropolis would also name it after…a zoo, which logically would not exist in a world where humans never were. In this essay on Zootopia 2 I will…

Zootopia 2, really? We could have had: 2-topia Zoo-2-pia 2Topia2Fropia Zootopia 2: Electric Boogaloo

In our house, today is an official holiday: PUMPKIN PIE BREAKFAST DAY. Pajamas, leftovers, there’s even a song. For breakfast we have…well, yeah.

Nothing like the FRIENDS Thanksgiving 50 states game to make you feel like a complete and utter dumbass

Happy Traditional Charlie Brown Thanksgiving breakfast to those who celebrate!

A few years ago, we started getting our turkey from a local farm. When my wife asked how fresh it would be (to dethaw) he told her: “Uh, it’s gonna have breakfast the morning you pick it up.” Top tier dialogue. No notes.

Calling it now, #StrangerThings has been absolutely chicken about killing characters. Either most of em are safe, or any deaths are going to feel tonally out of whack if they suddenly try for it now

#RingsofPower seems to be in a competition with itself to see how many times a character can say the title

Tired of the thing where we magnify and exaggerate critiques of popular art until we pretend they’re entirely void and meaningless as a way of showing TASTE.

Seeing lots of people nitpick Wicked: For Good, but look, this thing was an EVENT, and in 2025 that event was an epic fantasy deeply focused on female friendship. That's a win.

Three books is surely too many to try drafting at once, right? RIGHT???

Out of nowhere, and for several weeks now, my website is receiving huge amounts of traffic overseas. I am choosing to believe this is entirely legitimate, and that I have suddenly reached enormous heights of readership and popularity in China.

Ah yes, hello again time of year when I put new coffee directly into the microwave

Almost 3 years after its release, I still love every word in this angry little book so much. An environmental catastrophe, a road trip, and a crumbling marriage. Why not pick up a copy and see what I'm fussing about? @UnsolicitedP #postapocalyptic #thrillerbooks #DID

My goal was to top 200 miles in 2025. Amazingly, I'm getting close, and with a few weeks left to go!

Tonight's film is THE SEVENTH SEAL, probably my favorite of the semester. What's not to love? Medieval fantasy. Spiritual haunting. Death-obsession. Yes, yes, and yes, please.

Reposting this for the morning. Come on friends, looking for some good YA resources and advice! #writing #writingcommunity #fantasy

Finally getting around to #RingsOfPower season 2 and it’s…a show to watch on the treadmill. Could be worse, but could be a whole lot better too. And man, even as a lifelong #Tolkien fan, Amazon should have stuck with #WheelofTime instead

Had an almost fully-formed novel idea fall into my lap yesterday. Only, it's #YA (fantasy), which I've never tried before. #Writer friends: tips, resources, warnings? #writingtips #writingfiction #publishing

Still not sure what I’m feeling about this book (though I’m curious enough to try the Netflix adaptation). But it does an incredible job of using section breaks as propellant. A twist, a curve, a poetic reflection that lifts the prose beyond everything else surrounding it