Dime Store Riot

The Drifter Detective stories are probably one of the best things going in Indie crime fiction right now. From the beginning, I’ve been saying two things: this needs to be a TV show and we need a longer story from Elliott. One down!

I saw this picture of Henry Rollins the other day. I’ve been a fan of Uncle Hank’s for a long time, but I don’t think I’d ever seen his hair with this much length since his Black Flag days. To me, he looks a little like an aged Superman and a Clark Kent that put himself through community college working a crap manual labor job. The more I looked at the picture, the more I liked that idea. Grant Morrison’s run on Action Comics followed these lines somewhat—Superman as more of a socialist, working class hero—and then went down weird New 52 multiverse lines with aliens and future Supermen and some other stuff that I suspect most people found confusing. I’ve never made any secret of the fact that my favorite superhero is and will always be Superman, despite Warner’s attempt to kill my deep affection with that depressing and hopeless movie they called Man of Steel . He’s probably the comic book I would most love to write. Looking at Rollins' picture, I thought, if I ever got

Realism tends to be used the way a lot of people use religion in their lives, by picking and choosing when to apply what’s convenient to their purposes while ignoring everything else. In realism’s case? That’s usually the glaringly unrealistic. Worst of all, though, realism has become the propaganda phrase that means: "thoughtless slathered in dark and gritty." That’s then often twisted into some kind of merit badge that’s supposed to automatically convey worth and also “excuse” genre work—as if genre work needed to be excused.

Read Part I Even the quickest google search on humans and storytelling will materialize reams of fascinating information covering everything from the history and evolution of the process to how a story affects our brains and why. To me though, the interesting thing has always been why we tell stories in the first place. Why is storytelling so central to the human experience? All that research shows our brains are hardwired for stories on an evolutionary level. I mean, no other sentient being on earth tells stories. And, without even realizing it, you’ve probably told several yourself today or used information you remember only because of a story someone else told you. I think, at its most basic level, telling stories has always came down to three things working in concert: 1.) Understand something 2.) Convey Information 3.) Entertain If you stop and consider each of these, you can trace them both through the broad experience of humanity, cave-fire to boardroom, and

It’s that time of year when everyone is making posts about the previous year and the upcoming year. Here’s my thoughts on what I've seen: “2013 was awful!” According to my Facebook and Twitter feeds, last year sucked for a lot of people. It’s not surprising. There was a lot of suffering going on in the world. I know last year was fucking terrible for me. I feel like I could easily write out a list as long as my arm detailing every awful thing before I ever got to the legion of general worries and fears that threatened my thoughts almost constantly during the past year. I don’t want to do that though. Why? Well, it’s probably not for the reason you think. The problem is that it’s not helpful. That type of thing always leads to some sort of comparison in our minds, even if we don’t say it aloud, and I don’t want to compare anything because we almost never compare things in a helpful manner. Plus, I don’t want you to do it either. Look, sometimes I am