Posted on

Sontag’s Two Doors, Campbell’s Underworld

In a television interview that has circulated for years, Susan Sontag offers a small theory of storytelling. She points out that the English word “story” carries a double valence. We say “tell me the real story” to demand truth, and we say “that’s only a story” to dismiss invention. Stories, she argues, face two directions at once, toward fact and toward fantasy, and this doubleness sits at the center of what stories do.

Continue reading → Sontag’s Two Doors, Campbell’s Underworld

Posted on

Carceral Nation: Twenty Years from Blog Post to Book

In December 2006, I published an article on this blog about mass incarceration, racial disparities in the American prison system, and a concept I was trying to name: the carceral citizen, the person whose freedom exists in a state of permanent conditional revocation. The article was one entry among many in the Boles Blogs Network, which at its peak ran fourteen blogs across a range of subjects. One of those fourteen was called Panopticonic.

Continue reading → Carceral Nation: Twenty Years from Blog Post to Book

Posted on

The Canon for Sale: How Congress Handed Literature to a Homeschool Company

On March 17, 2026, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce passed H.R. 7661, a bill that would strip federal education funding from any public school whose libraries contain “sexually oriented material.” The bill’s formal title is the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” and it was introduced by Representative Mary Miller of Illinois on February 24, 2026, days after the State of the Union address. Eighteen Republican cosponsors signed on. No Democratic members supported the bill. The legislation now awaits a vote on the full House floor.

Continue reading → The Canon for Sale: How Congress Handed Literature to a Homeschool Company

Posted on

Collecting the Shards

Over the past few weeks, I have published several new books. From the outside, that can look like some kind of creative superpower. Like I locked myself in a room, drank a heroic amount of coffee, and sprinted through a stack of fresh manuscripts until the world blurred and the covers appeared. That is not what happened.

Continue reading → Collecting the Shards

Posted on

The Lashed Author

We, as authors, are lashed upon the whale we hope to tame; we are lashed by our publishers against the rail, who fail to tame us; we are lashed by our detractors upon the sun, and, they too, cannot tame our darkness — and yet! — we still try to thrive in the memorialization of what we hope to know, and what we know must be shared. In the light of that pitiful delight, the Authors Guild have released a new report concerning the overall mean income for authors, and the results are astounding, resounding, and, unfortunately for too many of us, sublimely familiar.

Continue reading → The Lashed Author

Posted on

The Ghost Business: More Adventures in Script Doctoring as The Script Professor

I recently wrote about a fellow who wanted my Script Doctor services via my Script Professor.com website, and the reaction to that poor guy was so fascinating across all my public and private interwebs, that I decided to offer a follow-up to that adventure. When I do script doctoring, or ghost writing, as The Script Professor, anything goes, and by that I mean, I can fix anything written that is broken — and that includes scripts for television, radio, film and books and scholarly papers and anything else that might be in need of pruning or total rehabilitation.

Continue reading → The Ghost Business: More Adventures in Script Doctoring as The Script Professor

Posted on

Facebook Censors Boles Books Cover Advertising

Three days ago, after publishing our latest Boles Book — American Sign Language Level 5: A Field Guide for Advanced Communication Techniques for People with Other Disabilities — I unwittingly ran afoul of Facebook’s advertising rules.  I had “too much text” in my book cover image and so Facebook censored my $40.00USD boosted post promotion of my book midstream, effectively blocking my book cover image on their social network because my design aesthetic didn’t meet their advertising rules.

Continue reading → Facebook Censors Boles Books Cover Advertising

Posted on

The Titular, Circular, Cyclical and the Forlorn: Rescuing Robert Frost from Himself

Robert Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry.  He was an earthy icon and, in some eyes, an American shame, for the man could love only himself and not his children or his wife. I’m not sure if that’s a crime against himself, or his promises, but there is no denying the man was an original and he knew how to write and he knew what he was.

Marred by the mistake of genius, Robert Frost cared only for his poetry, and his legacy, and that’s why the new fascination with protecting Frost’s legacy on the page is so intriguing.

Continue reading → The Titular, Circular, Cyclical and the Forlorn: Rescuing Robert Frost from Himself

Posted on

The New Writer’s Ruse: The Bemused Will Not Work for Hire

The bane of any hopeful professional author — one who writes for money to feed a family and a future fortunate — is the old “Work for Hire” kludge-as-cudgel and it is wielded against unwitting amateur authors, and even published, working, authors, by publishing houses as a “proper payment system” that is both fair to each side and an early warning windfall for the writer.  Unfortunately, none of that is true.

Publishers love to force writers into Work for Hire contracts because the benefit is all on their side of the dyad, and while initial risks are shared, the goal of good fortune tomorrow is not.

I warned of this impending trend way back on September 7, 2007 in my article: “Work For Hire is a Bad Idea” —

If you get royalties you are in partnership with your publisher.  If you are “Work For Hire” you’re used up when you’re done writing.

Publishers live to exploit that hungry author desire for fast money now — and in the process of the “Work For Hire” hiring — the author not only loses a potential profit bonanza, but also sells out their self-respect, self-worth, and fellow authors.

Continue reading → The New Writer’s Ruse: The Bemused Will Not Work for Hire

Posted on

The Written, Rising, Art: On Writing Writing Prompts

A great joy of teaching is when your students surprise you with something unexpected.  One good way to find out what students are thinking is to ask them to respond to a writing prompt.  My favorite writing prompt for Playwriting students is to ask them to write a dramatic scene that begins with this line: “I’m going to kill you!”  30% of students will immediately write, as a second line, “Just kidding!” — but for those students who believe in the threat first line, the rest of the story tears off.

Continue reading → The Written, Rising, Art: On Writing Writing Prompts