My buddy Jude rides a long board. The man pushed that skateboard for miles and miles and miles. He claims the only time he feels peace is when he’s on that skateboard. I get it, and I’m not too different. I get it because I feel that sort of peaceContinue Reading
I plan what I read in advance for two reasons. The first is because of a conversation I had with my buddy Mark years ago about appropriate books for corresponding seasons. I think it’s great to read books that set a mood for a season like the old fashion summerContinue Reading
Issue 23 Umbrella Factory Magazine launches on March 15. I’m amazed that it’s gone on as long as it has. I feel like every time I start to look at other magazines, they come and go with alarming frequency. I think it’s the nature of the small literary magazine: it’sContinue Reading
There aren’t too many things I really loathe. There are many things that I generally do not like, a lot of things that I don’t agree with, and several things that just leave me disappointed. I don’t normally write about such things either. And I don’t use my blog, orContinue Reading
What is a short story collection? I know a good number of writers. I know these writers from grad school, barroom meetings and from the literary magazine community. I know a great number of short story writers. I know them from the aforementioned places and especially from my work atContinue Reading
The process, stats and feelings I made a decision to take a hiatus from the digital world last year and do all of my writing in composition notebooks. I made a goal of 25 short stories. I had completed that goal by the fall. The whole process felt very goodContinue Reading
I don’t think it’s uncommon to feel scattered. Scattered like your mind is in 3,000 directions at once and nothing gets done. Or you feel like your energy is scattered, like you’ve just got too many projects going on and the results are the same—nothing seems to be getting done.Continue Reading
“The Theory, the Fallacy” Back in 2014, while still living in Glendale and in my last days at Marlowe’s and before the shoot of “To Better Days,” I decided to write poetry. The decision to write poetry was not too strange. In the waning months at Glendale’s slum of “TheContinue Reading
The fall of 2013 was a blur for me. The biggest reason, of course, was that we moved from Portland back to Denver at the end of August. Furthermore, I got back to Denver on a Sunday night and I went right back to work at Marlowe’s on Monday. Marlowe’s,Continue Reading
In the spring of 2009, I was writing manuscript after manuscript. My goal when I left Goddard College in January of that year was to write a handful of short stories and one novel. After all, I had just spent thousands of dollars on an MFA degree and countless hoursContinue Reading