MoodyTunes

Welcome news from the Land of Arbitrary Rules I Love: more and more professors are banning laptops in college classrooms.
This isn’t exactly news — laptop bans show up on many an English department syllabus in my neck of the woods — but it did re-stimulate my amazement at students tapping away on laptops in classes. [...]

I completed the final version of my thesis this weekend, and during one of my procrastination breaks I found a couple videos I thought I’d share. Here’s a kid named Sungha Jung jamming on his guitar. I went in search of classical music clips — that’s what I’ve been listening too lately, and that’s how [...]

Strange, strange feeling to learn that Barry Hannah died yesterday.
When I re-started my writing life in 2006, I found one of those Books Every Writer Should Read lists somewhere on the Internet. The list was sorted by titles, and a book called “Airships” was at the top. I thought I’d start from there and work [...]

Congratulations go out to Lorraine Lopez, whose story collection “Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories” was named a PEN/Faulkner finalist yesterday.
Buy the book buy the book buy the book buy the book buy the book buy the book buy the book buy the book buy the book buy the book buy the book buy the [...]

I found an interesting article at The Guardian, via The New Yorker, yesterday — they (Guardian) asked a bunch of writers to send in their random tidbits of writing advice.
Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Enright, Neil Gaiman, and others responded. It’s a fun list of lists to read over if you’re [...]

I’ve seen a lot of “artisan” goods lately. Artisan cheese. Artisan bread. Artisan beer. I haven’t thought about the term “artisan” much, but my impression is that artisan products/wares/foods are marketed as such because they are hand-crafted with loving care by actual humans, as opposed to mass-produced by soulless machines. Makes sense. There’s Wonder Bread, [...]

I’m in the middle of story production mode (and reading a bunch of other stories, which is always fun to do when you’re working on a draft) so this will be quick.
I’m pleased to announce the Foaming Hand Soap won last week’s poll, a hotly contested election of America’s Favorite Public Restroom Soap.
And it looks [...]

Though I was born in Minnesota, I didn’t hang around long enough to learn to accept snow as a fact of life. It still feels special. A day off from school, maybe, or simply a day or two a year with magical flakes falling from the sky. That might be happening today in Nashville…rumor has [...]