Friday Footnotes - 6.26.26

Welcome to Friday Footnotes, a new series intended to fill the void when I've spent too much time writing fiction and too little time writing a new thoughtful blog post for you.

House of Nepenthe - Alternate Opening

The bar around him was an amalgam of familiar set pieces: the long bar with multi-colored bottles on the wall behind it, the pool tables in the distance with their clacking balls, and a small dance floor with only a handful of people gyrating to a song he couldn’t hear.

Writers, Find Your People

Writing is a lonely profession, but there are times when you need someone else to help answer the difficult questions like "how many movie quotes are too many?"

How to Turn an Existing Short Story into a Novel

Pamela Koehne-Drube over at Novlr wrote a great framework for expanding a short story into a novel. It's like she was reading my diary.

Last Date Night in the Valley

He’d wanted to take her to a fancy restaurant in Corpus Christi, but with her last class of the day letting out at 7:30 p.m., she’d balked at the six hour round-trip just to eat raw shrimp from a champagne glass.

AI Boiled a Small Lake to Bring House of Nepenthe to Life

They say all is fair in love and self-publishing, which is why I have no trouble throwing money at anything that might remotely help me sell more books... even if "anything" occasionally means accelerating the heat death of the planet.

Objection! This Isn't Funny at All (How Pauly Shore Lied to Me About Jury Duty)

There is a small subset of people in this country who don't recognize the comedic genius of Pauly Shore's work in the 1990s, and if you happen to be in that camp, I'd like you to stop reading right now, as I don'

One Is The Loneliest Number (of POVs in a Vinestead Anthology Novel)

I know, I know... House of Nepenthe isn't even out yet, and here I am talking about Book 9 of the Vinestead Anthology. Believe me, I wish I had the marketing instinct to build up excitement for my longest and most ambitious novel ever before it hits shelves,

Do You Read Science Fiction? (And Other Icebreakers I Used Selling Books at STAPLE!)

I managed to snag a table at STAPLE! The Independent Media Expo on January 24, 2026, thus beginning three months of anxiety and ill-conceived plans to dye my hair, change my name, and flee to Mexico. It was going to be my first time ever selling my books in

I Spent a Year Writing Code with ChatGPT and Learned Nothing

In a world where we are judged by our results and not by what we learned along the way, AI-assisted coding seems like the perfect shortcut. But though we deliver our products faster, are we sure we're not losing something in the process? Something key to our own personal development?

The Psychology of Easter Brunch; May Contain Eggs and Nick Miller

The family and I took a little trip out to the Lost Pines Resort just east of Austin and capped off our weekend of farm animals, lazy rivers, and torrential downpours with an innocuous Easter brunch in what the resort calls their "Barn" but was more like their

On Trauma, Time, and Anaïs Nin

I've been reading non-fiction by Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin in the hopes of transporting myself back to a time I've romanticized as being the height of literary community. I love the little insights into their thinking, their processes, and their feelings. I also like