Praise for Time of Death

I am so honored by the unanimous response to my novel-in-progress, Time of Death, at the 2012 Orange County Christian Writers Conference this weekend.  The manuscript excerpt I submitted won three awards, including First Prize in the Fiction Writing Contest sponsored by The Editorial Department, Second Prize in the WestBow Press Writing Contest, and Third Prize [...]

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More on Rejection

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about rejection again.  Or should I say, I’ve been thinking a lot about it still?  Granted, it’s been an auspicious year so far.  Almost all I’ve attempted since toasting 2012 has turned out pretty well.  Okay, spectacularly well.  Naturally, then, I’ve downgraded the wins, reasoning that the successes I’ve experienced [...]

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Part Two: An Interview with MFA Graduate and Author Ruben Guzman

While enrolled in Chapman University’s dual MA in English and MFA in Creative Writing program, Ruben Guzman wrote The Fountain in Forsyth Park, the tale of a single, middle-aged gay man searching for meaning and mystical connections in the moments of conventional life.  Guzman and I were peers in the program until his graduation last [...]

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An Interview with MFA Graduate and Author Ruben Guzman

As a graduate student enrolled in Chapman University’s dual MA in English and MFA in Creative Writing program, Ruben Guzman wrote his debut novel The Fountain in Forsyth Park, the tale of a middle-aged homosexual man searching for meaning in his melancholy life.  Guzman and I were peers in the program until his graduation last [...]

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A Sense of Style

Anyone who has been engaged in the craft of writing for any length of time has developed a uniquely personal style.  During the last three years in Chapman’s English and Creative Writing program, my own narrative style has been described as meticulous, high, ornamental, tedious, lovely, distracting, measured, and obsolete.  While some of these modifiers [...]

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Books to Read and Tales to Tell…

I love the month of January.  While it’s bittersweet to take down the lights, pack the stockings and holiday garland, and toss what’s left of the panettone and eggnog, there’s something about the clean slate of this month.  With the onset of a new year and my birthday just two days apart, those first few [...]

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The Write Stuff

It’s hard to believe that this is my 300th post.  As I saw this occasion approaching, I reflected on the last twenty-eight months of commentary, criticism, musings, poems, favorite literary quotes and passages, biographies, portraits, event information, and original fiction and nonfiction excerpts I’ve presented and wondered, as I often do, what is writeaboutable?  What [...]

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Two Archetypal Years

Two years ago on this day, with a succinct, autogenous “Hello, World!” announcing its quiet arrival on the heavily populated, cyber literary landscape, Archetype was born.  Originally conceived to chronicle my journey through Chapman University’s MFA program, I promptly posted original essay excerpts on Jonathan Franzen and the waning of a literary America (“Antisocial or [...]

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This Fall’s Literary Lineup

With company budgets to write, marathons to run, academic convention deadlines to meet, and back-to-school demands to fulfill, fall has almost always been the most exhilarating time of year for me.  After the somewhat slower pace of summer, the requirements and velocity of my jam-packed (and, yes, largely self-imposed) fall schedule seem impossible.  Despite thoughtful advance [...]

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Extended Play

As my Archetype subscribers and regular visitors know, I frequently bemoan the necessity to condense 15- to 25-page original essays or narratives of ostensibly “publishable” quality to a scant six or seven pages in order to meet the submission guidelines for actual publication or presentation: After spending yet another painful weekend pruning over 4,000 words or [...]

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