Brian Peterka, artist, architect, and the palest visage in the ATL, has been doing collaborative art with another artist for some time.

His latest installment incorporates a scrap of paper (actually the cover of an 80s Harlequin romance novel) I originally sent to him, and I'm so glad that he took my gift, ripped it apart, cut it, slathered glue all over it, and slapped it onto something entirely different.

That, to me, is a huge part of creating something

I don’t know about you, but I tend to judge books by their covers. So when I decided that I was going to indie publish my fairy tales, I knew that a kickass cover was nonnegotiable. Using the guidelines suggested by David Gaughran (his book here), I knew what the specs for the final product would have to be. Now it was time to find an artist to make my vision a reality.

The stories I planned to publish

Hello, friends. I wanted to take a moment to introduce you to our new publishing company, Hammer & Birch. We formed it to address my own needs as a writer, but also to test cool new avenues to get in touch with readers. This blog was the first step in this process. H&B is the next.

The name Hammer & Birch alludes to a Scandinavian myth about the origin of the Northern Lights: long, long ago, the blow

Microfiction Entry Day 29:

St Peter watched the approaching figure. “What’s in the cooler?” he asked.

“Pepperoni. Cannoli. You hungry?” The little man opened the lid.

The angel smiled. “Come on in, buddy.”

Mr Pepperoni Cannoli, as he was commonly known in Milwaukee, passed away a week before I wrote this. Many a time I saw him enter a bar on the East Side, peddling his late-night snacks to the sloshed customers.

He was a character, and I mean

Microfiction Entry Day 28:

We drove west over pitted roads, skipping the tolls. I watched the houses grow, breathe, expand to fill the space of the plains. My lungs did the same.

True story! This happened over Thanksgiving weekend last year, as my plus one drove the car 1000 miles to our native land. You can tell exactly where you are in the US just by the architecture. Philly is all old and cramped, with row houses jammed against one

Microfiction Entry Day 27:

Sunrise illuminated two people, naked, bloody, and resigned.

The woman stood first, quipping “Same time next month?”

“Barring a silver bullet,” the guy replied.

Werewolves! Always fun. I think we need to get back to the notion of “monsters as cursed” instead of the “be-glittered supermodel” trend that’s been taking over our fiction.

Speaking of taking over, I'd like to talk about memes. I heart them, a lot. And I realized that part of the