This is rather unformed. Please recognize this is a jumping off point from which I’ll do more reading. It’s a question, not an answer.
I see, frequently, people on the left advocate for (and use, actually) a “fair game” approach to targeting enemies of the left. By way of explaining what I mean, let me back up to where I got the term: Scientology. Continue reading
My agent, Erik Hane, and his business partner Laura did, in fact, win the Digital Book World Award for best podcast this evening.
Print Run Podcast is one of my favorite shows in any medium. I don’t think I was there from the very beginning— I started May or June of 2016, I think? But damn near close. It’s a really great resource for aspiring writers to get up to speed on the issues in the industry. They deserve your support.
Congrats to them. This is only the beginning.
My agent and good friend Erik Hane has started a new agency with Laura Zats called Headwater Literary Management. You may know them from Print Run Podcast, which is award nominated (and may be award winning before the day is out!). Erik is better qualified to say what he is looking for and how he sees his career than I am. If I may say so, I see him as a gifted structural editor with an interest in applying his leftism to who he signs and how he builds their careers. His integrity– the continuity between the ethical views he cultivates on his list and how he applies those ethics to his work– is impressive. I am a better writer for having worked with him.
Now, let me gracefully and without calculation pivot from my friend and agent’s amazing accomplishment to that traditional author blog post we all love: how I got my agent.
Neil Gaiman has a cute story about talking to someone else being recognized at a dinner, who wasn’t sure what he was doing there. To which Neil Gaiman replied, “But you were the first man on the moon. Surely that counts for something?” Armstrong replied he just went where he was sent.
Here’s the thing: Neil Armstrong was right. Continue reading
Folks, it’s that time of year again: the part of late summer we’re gonna pretend is fall because screw summer, anyway. That means Nightscript, a yearly anthology of dark literary stories, is available for preorder! I’m in it with my short story “The Parchment Theif”! I was previously in Nightscript III, and it’s great to be back.
Per C. M. Muller:
If you are interested in preordering a trade paperback direct from the publisher (via PayPal), please visit:
Alternatively, the ebook is available from:
Amazon, Amazon UK, and most other Amazon platforms. (Note: the trade paperback will be available to purchase from Amazon on Oct. 1st.)
If you want a preview of the first couple paragraphs, I’ll be including them in my next newsletter. You can sign up for that here!
I thought I’d share a little bit about how I got the idea for the story.
I recently came across the idea of organizing around our vulnerabilities rather than our strengths. (I won’t cite it at the moment because this is a personal blog and I’m just talking to a small audience; nevertheless, it’s not my original idea.) That is, we all need healthcare. Most of us will need eldercare. We all need education. But that’s not how society (or even most left movements) are organized. We organize hierarchically according to what we can contribute, with capital being among the valid “contributions.”
I think the left community at the moment is made up of people who are here because they have needs capitalism isn’t meeting. We’re here because of our “weakness” not our strengths. But I think, especially online, we’re still organized hierarchically by what we can contribute. We still, unthinkingly, use that framework when we talk about power, and who has it, and who deserves it.
An addendum to my prior post on speaking to the manager: Writer Ijeoma Oluo was the target of an attempted SWATing. Of course this is wh*te supr*macist terrorism. It is also an extension of the techniques developed during g*mergate (systemically, as part of a community) and employed now outside of it.
Speaking to the Manager seems to be having a moment. Yesterday, Bret Stephens, NYT opinion writer and Freeze Peach advocate, wrote an email to an assistant professor who made a (completely overlooked) joke Tweet comparing Bret Stephens to a bedbug. In the email, in which Bret maintained emotional control, he invited this assistant professor to come call Bret a bedbug to his face over a nice family dinner. He also copied the university’s provost.
This man is not slick, but he’s not meant to be. Continue reading
I am going to include the entire text of this Twitter thread, because it is just terrible. I want to tackle the underpinnings behind it rather than argue the particulars, because I think the obvious ways this take is bad and wrong are pretty self-evident. Mostly, I want to talk about dualism and how much I hate it.
Many years ago, I heard about a famously difficult logical puzzle sometimes called the blue eyes problem.
The problem goes: there is an isolated island with 201 people—100 with blue eyes, 100 with brown eyes, and one green-eyed guru. They’re each perfect logicians and can each see everyone else at all times, but they may not communicate in any way. Once per day, at midnight, a ferry visits the island, and every person who knows they have blue eyes must leave immediately. The only person who may speak is the guru, and one day, the guru says, “I see someone with blue eyes.”
The question: how many people leave, and when?
M. K. Anderson 