Storytellers Unplugged and Chizine - My essay & My Column are New
My monthly essay is up over at Storytellers Unplugged
When You Are Engulfed in Flames: I’m currently listening to the audio book of a short story collection by an author named David Sedaris. The collection is entitled When You are Engulfed in Flames, and it’s basically a series of stories based on events in the author’s life, characters he’s met, and stories he’s heard from others. Prior to this book, I’ve had no experience of Sedaris as an author. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, a market I decided a long while back I did not have the time or temperament to attempt to break The style, I suppose, is literary fiction - mainstream - the world we genre folk seldom get a pass-key to visit.
==>> READ THE ENTIRE ESSAY ==>>
My new quarterly column - From the Shadeaux - is also new at the Chiaroscuro online magazine:
IN THE TRADITION OF… And Other Signs of Reflected Light
It has occurred to me lately that TV programming is a great way to explain what I consider to be one the biggest problems with books, the public, and publishing today—if not the biggest. The epiphany came to me first while watching the new program The Mentalist which is about a psychic turned detective who lost his wife and family to a serial killer he’d insulted on a live television broadcast. The problem is a very deeply rooted one, and I’m pretty well convinced that it’s not one that can be fixed—but I think, at the same time, we need to remain aware of it.
I won’t even try to guess which came first, but let’s put all these shows in a row and see if something clicks. Monk, Psych, The Mentalist, Life—and I guess if you wanted to you could add in the main protagonists from the CSI shows and the profilers on Criminal Minds. What we have is a formula that works. We have a character with the super power of being able to observe a situation and catch details that other people miss. In one show it’s a detective pretending to be a psychic, in another it’s a retired psychic being a detective. All of these shows are interesting, entertaining, and popular.
==>> Read The Entire Column ==>>
More later!
-DNW
