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Smashing Trains: Storytelling as Problem Solving

4:55 pm ⋅ April 19, 2013 | Post a comment

I always hated math. Locking two numbers together in Gladiator-style mortal combat made no sense to me. Who cares about the victor of that bloody conflict, when there are so many cool things that could be happening in outer space, and slightly less cool things (but just as bloody as number Hunger Games) that have already happened on this world? Other subjects were far more interesting to me.

But the one small bit of math that I did enjoy happened to be applied mathematics. You know, making numbers do things that matter in the real world. Two trains leaving different stations and careening toward one another at a breakneck speed was fun, get your popcorn ready type stuff waiting to happen.

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TJP: Halfway There

11:09 pm ⋅ April 14, 2013 | One comment

I have been plugging away at my current work in progress, The Jimmy Project like crazy over the last couple of weeks, and I’ve got good news. Or good news for me, anyway: I’m halfway done.

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The Booket List: March 2013

11:22 pm ⋅ April 1, 2013 | One comment

March was a bit of a slow month for me in terms of reading. I did manage to read three books, and while that’s nice, it puts me short of my goal of reading one book per week. I blame that on the book I’m writing, partially, but also because March was a crazy month in general. Oh, and the fact that I’ve been reading tons of Calvin and Hobbes. Hopefully I’ll do better in April.

Here’s March’s Booket List:

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The Fat Princess

7:48 am ⋅ March 27, 2013 | One comment



Sometimes I’m a fat princess. No, I’m not having an identity crisis, I’m just identifying with the excellently realized character in THE GIRL OF FIRE and THORNS by Rae Carson, one of the most recent books I’ve read. The book follows the exploits of Elisa, a powerless, overweight, self-conscious princess that happens to have been identified as God’s Chosen One at birth — and never quite feels like she matches up to the mark of the Godstone that rests in her navel.

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On Hero Worship and Hard Work

4:18 pm ⋅ March 22, 2013 | Post a comment

It’s always nice when someone you admire says something positive about a thing you did.

If you aren’t aware, some time ago my friends and I made a video called Day in the Life of a Turret, which sort of went viral. A few years back, I stumbled across a blog post by one of my author idols, Lev Grossman, who wrote The Magicians books and used to be a writer for TIME Magazine, where he called Day in the Life of a Turret “genius.” Naturally, geeking out happened on my end.

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Rewriting History and Adding Superkids

9:06 am ⋅ March 20, 2013 | 4 comments



The most interesting part of writing The Jimmy Project, my current novel about a superkid raised by the U.S. government, is that it takes place in an alternate Earth, with a history different from our own. For other things I’ve written, I’ve only had to do a modicum of research, just some brief Wikipedia browsing to make sure I wasn’t completely off my rocker before tackling a few sections. TJP has been wildly different in that I’m writing about a time period I have zero firsthand knowledge of (the 1930s-1950s), besides a few World War II movies.

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Your Thing Is Good and You Should Feel Good

9:32 pm ⋅ March 14, 2013 | 8 comments

First drafts are hard.

No, seriously. We pay lip-service to the idea of writing being a finicky, petty and blood-sucking monster, but for real, it can be a killer to try to start a new book. No matter how confident you feel about where you are as a writer, or as an anything, first attempts tend to rough us up, WWE style, with about as many theatrics to boot.

As much as I tell myself that it’s fine to let a first draft be crappy, and as much as I tell myself that I need to wait to revise, the urge to tweak is so strong I send myself into obsessive fits.

I doubt I’m the only one.

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Formative Felines: On Calvin and Hobbes

8:46 pm ⋅ March 11, 2013 | 3 comments



As of this weekend, I’m the proud owner of the Complete Calvin and Hobbes Collection. something that fills me with an embarrassing amount of joy. Don’t get me wrong: I probably have the majority of these books in separate places between my house and my old bedroom at home, but they’ve become so worn down from years of re-reading that I thought it would be nice to own them again, on the real.

Part of the reason I wanted to own the collection (besides the fact that I want to read every strip again), is that I want my daughter to grow up with Calvin and Hobbes the way I did.

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The Booket List: February 2013

8:33 pm ⋅ March 4, 2013 | Post a comment

In terms of reading, I think Feburary 2013 will best be remembered as the month I discovered the amazing, hilarious, and deeply feelsy work of John Green. I’ve been hearing about Green’s writing for quite some time, but finally pulled the trigger on his newest work, The Fault in Our Stars, as my first book of the month… and followed it up quickly with Looking for Alaska. I’ll say more about those books below, but this has been one of the more enjoyable Booket Lists I’ve been able to put together so far.

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