Why Stories Matter, Especially Now
We are in tumultuous times and it is easy to dismiss art, music, writing, maybe particularly writing fiction, as a luxury. I think it is anything but.
Friday Feast: Hygge Your Reading Life, What to Read when Trapped in Your Home by a New Baby, 16 Friggin’ Great Books, Dystopian, Escapist, Immigrant, Feminist, Finnish Books & More, Lots More Book Recs!!
The pace of change emanating from Washington, D.C., has many of us reaching for books—whether to escape, learn, resist or a little of each–Dead Darlings is here to help.
Review: Understanding Show, Don’t Tell
As often as Show, Don’t Tell is drummed into us, it’s not always clear how to do it. Telling is sometimes necessary, even desirable in a sprawling novel, and the impulse to perform corrective showing can lead to page-count creep…
Into, Well…the Abyss
Into the Valley, by Ruth Galm, a 272 page novel, might be of interest to aspiring novelists for two reasons; one, it’s a terrific novel. And two, Ms. Galm’s manuscript was rejected over sixty times before she finally got it…
What to Write in Troubled Times? Whatever You Want.
For the past two years, I’ve been steadily working on a middle grade novel about a lonely 12-year-old girl in small-town Wisconsin who meets four siblings with a dangerous fantasy world. While I was under no illusions that I was…
Friday Feast: Prizes, Agents, Books, Oh, My!
As you may know, Dead Darlings, “the site for everything novel,” is a production of GrubStreet’s year-long program, the Novel Incubator. Founded by novelist and GrubStreet’s artistic director, Christopher Castellani, and developed with novelists and Grub instructors, Lisa Borders and Michelle Hoover, the Incubator takes…