jay allisan

I have not read The Handmaid's Tale. I am not a huge dystopian fan. But I did meet this book's author, Christina Dalcher, on a critiquing website many years ago, where she gave me great feedback on a flash fiction piece (Bump, check it out here).  I've followed her extremely prolific career since then, so of course I had to check out her debut.

This is a great concept. Set in the n...

This artist (James Vincent McMorrow) and particularly this album (Early in the Morning) are my current obsession. I stumbled across one of his songs during yoga, of all things, and I've pretty much been listening to this album nonstop since. 

JVM is billed as a singer/songwriter, and this album is wonderfully engaging from start to finish. It's got what I think of as a bit of a Wil...

I have never been a craftsy person. Art has never been my strong suit. I am the only one in my family without childhood artwork on display in my parent's house, and in comparison to my sister, who can draw/paint/sculpt/knit/etc, my artistic ability is seriously elementary. As in, it's about as good as it was in elementary school.

Knowing (and accepting) this about myself, I nevertheless...

As I said in my last post, one of my writing goals for 2018 is to improve my craft; that is, become a better writer. While practice is arguably the best way to improve at anything, it can only get you so far. As my basketball coach used to say, practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. Just like a coach might assess and correct your free-throw form, we as writers m...

Well, it's that time. Time to set a bunch of goals with the best of intentions and lose focus not even halfway through. Just me? Okay, then. But surely this time will be different.

Rather than set a bunch of very specific goals with set-in-stone timelines for completion, I'm taking a more lackadaisical approach to the things I want to accomplish this year, writing-wise. (I just googled...