“Never trust a storyteller,” Jonathan Gottschall says in The Story Paradox. There are a number of reasons he says this but primary among them is that we’re always manipulating the story for maximum effect. We think about what details to emphasize and which to downplay. We spend a lot of time deciding which rock will…

When I was a child, I had an insatiable appetite for fairy tales. Rumpelstiltskin, Jack and the Beanstalk, the Elves and the Shoemaker, Three Billy Goats Gruff. I mean, their fantastical aspects aside, fairy tales are a lot like life: an unprepared person enters a chaotic, upside-down world, and tries to survive. Resourcefulness is necessary,…

People sometimes wonder how someone as feral as I am came to be a writer, which is all about connecting and communicating with other people. And the reason is, for me at least, that the connecting and communicating with others is more of a bug in the process than a feature. I mean I want…

Me, on LinkedIn: Geez, you people are wound so tight. It’s just hustle hustle hustle, be A-MAH-ZING 24/7, be so good no one can ignore you . . . y’all make me need a nap. I mean, even mediocre people deserve to make a living. Gen Y person: I was a member of the Mediocre…

Every Tuesday, we go to the farmers market and I give Jessica four dollars to buy a chocolate-pecan cookie from the French baker (literally a baker who is French). And every Tuesday there just happens to be a second cookie that is broken or otherwise not quite good enough to sell to customers that makes…

People sometimes wonder how someone as feral as I am came to be a writer, which is all about connecting and communicating with other people. For me, the connecting and communicating with others is more of a bug in the process than a feature. I mean I want people to read my books because otherwise…