I recently watched a documentary about that reaffirmed many changes I made last few years to my mental outlook (I read a LOT of brain books the last few years). Brains are hallucination engines. If the story is the world is shit, everything is fucked, our brains reframes every interaction. It sucks up all the […]
“We’re Fucked” Feels Like a Profound Insight. It’s Actually a Trap. Read More »
This update went out in my most recent newsletter. If you’d like to get updates like this, sign up for The Hurley Cut: Story & Power. Somewhere between 2011 and 2020, I lost my way. I’ve been trying to untangle exactly what happened: mistakes made, near-misses, lucky breaks lost, poor choices. I was building a
I Broke Apart. I Came Back Better. Read More »
I’ve been on the struggle bus with female MC in this new book. I keep trying to make her less monstrous than other Hurley heroines, and is it any wonder that’s been a struggle? ? At this point in my life, I really need to stop fighting my urge to “differentiate” and just go full
On Pulling Your Creative Punches Read More »
I was alive in the 90s when Clinton pushed NAFTA (it had been passed years before but Dems refused to ratify it!). It destroyed local economies, undercut worker power and wages locally, exploited workers in other countries, and made rich people richer: That’s a reality the far left AND the far right can agree on.
Remake the World: Tell a Story Worth Believing In Read More »
CONTAINS SPOILERS I wasn’t going to go and see the latest iteration of Mad Max. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a passionate fan of 80’s apocalypse movies (I wrote a whole series in homage to them!). I love the aesthetics, the desperation, the tough characters, the monstrous masculinity that both men and women must take
Wives, Warlords and Refugees: The People Economy of Mad Max Read More »
So last year Andrea Phillips put together a great list of markets that do and do not consider taking stories which were created via Patreon support. Because Patreon is a new-ish crowdfunding too, it’s not generally mentioned in submission guidelines whether or not the venue considers a Patreon story already published or not. Now that I’m
SFF Markets that Consider Patreon Stories for Publication Read More »
Hey! Guess what!? I’m part of the establishment now! Or, rather, I have an article in Locus Magazine this month. Check out the teaser below, and then go grab (or view) a copy of the October issue to read the rest: “Everybody Already Knows”: How Silence About the Realities of Publishing Hurts Authors Families
New Article in Locus Mag: Silence in Publishing Read More »
No, that post title is not a directive, that’s the name of a movie I finally ponied up to watch my last night at Wellspring before I passed out. I’d been putting off this movie for a good long while, primarily because I heard about it not long after some nut job shot up a
God Bless America: Living our Dystopia Read More »
I was only stumped by one question at WorldCon, and that was posed by Elizabeth Bear at the “Looking Forward to the Post-Apocalyptic World” panel. She asked why someone would choose to write future fiction vs. secondary world fantasy and what the primary differences were, or something to that end. The best I could come up
Secondary world fantasy vs. future fiction Read More »
I was reading a well-known science fiction author last night and found myself repeatedly bumped out of the story by all the techno-babble. I’m not averse to techno-babble, mind, it’s just that I didn’t buy that this POV character viewed the world through techno-babble glasses. If you’re staring at a sunset, it’s highly unlikely that
Swords and Sociology, Redux Read More »