Stray thoughts on the purpose of gatekeepers

I’ve had difficulty dealing with the disruption in publishing over the last decade or so. I was unlucky to find myself entering the lists just as the publishing world began to fall apart. Those fragments of an old guard I was fortunate enough to encounter showed enthusiasm for my fiction, though in trying to find

The Power of Mastery

This is mastery: overcoming the limits of the self through the practice of a life-affirming discipline.

“Sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality…”

Sentiment takes any criticism, real or only inferred, and turns it into an excuse for a reaction, anything to return the focus where we demand it belongs.

Pushing Past Futility

I’ve always had a poor tolerance for futility. Faced with a task I sense is futile, I’m like a cat with a sock on its back. I just collapse under the weight of absurdity. This has rarely made me popular. The war of attrition waged by this on friendships forged under the sunny skies of