Apps for Poets! – Comic

I stood in a bookstore next to an author whom I would describe as both famous and wonderful, and she patted a stack of her own books that sat on a table, prominently displayed. She smiled a little—a private smile. She looked at me, a bit embarrassed that I’d seen her, and said, “It’s still…

John Henry Fleming’s forthcoming story collection, Songs for the Deaf, is full of haunted characters: haunted by the deaths of loved ones, memories of lovers, knowledge of truth. The range of characters—aliens, bigfoot look-alikes, cloud readers, floating girls—lends itself to satire, creating a new mythology out of crises of faith. Most importantly, though, these stories…

What to do when, as a writer, you’re ready to move on from a world you’ve created, but your fan base is not? L. Frank Baum, the originator of the Oz world and all its charming characters, had exactly that experience. It goes like this. Beginning in 1900, he put out, roughly, a book a…