Steve Almond is a genius when it comes to instructing writers about writing about sex (or not writing about sex). “Remember that the sexiest thing about sex is really desire, which is just a fancy word for not getting laid.”

The reader must be afraid for someone in order for a story to succeed. We don’t get to choose our obsessions; obsessions choose us.

If you are a friend of mine, you know that on October 15 I finished reading the advance proof of  Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving for review. I loved the novel for its characters, of course, and also for its meta-fictional qualities.

If you click to the latest issue of the iconic inpossereview, issue 26, you’ll discover there Unconventional Conventions~ a collection of fiction that, in the words of the guest fiction editor Debra Di Blasi, “becomes more. Is not static.”

While at my home office near Sacramento, I did an on line search for a publishing house called Spuyten Duyvil in New York City. S-D, as it is known, is the publisher for my friend and colleague, Peter Grandbois’, newest work