Josh Strnad's Blog, page 5

Two Story Sales, and Other News

I’m still not quite used to this blogging business, and so myposts may wind up fairly disjointed and far apart from time to time. That’s fine, I guess.Life is packed with other stuff, and for the past month or so I’ve barely had time to gather my wits about me, let alone document it here. The past month or so has seen the birth of my new nephew, a visit from my grandparents, my coming down with a severe cold, paperworktrouble with my grad school, the eventual beginning of a new semester, and...

Free Christmas Music To Make Your Holiday Playlist Jingle Jangle

My musical tastes lean toward the eclectic (or the weird, as my teenage sister would attest), and I’m very fond of all sorts of unusual stuff. This may sound a bit hipsterish,but it’s just something I’m into–I’m constantly on the lookout for fun new music, so if you have anything to share, please send it my way. The good news for me is that many of the independent artists I enjoy frequently post their music for free on the internet– and a blog is a great opportunity for me to share some of it...

Manos: The Hands of Labor

The past several weeks, I’ve been working in a friend’s metal shop, running a chop saw, drill press, and grinder, carrying beams from place to place, screwing in bolts and popping rivets into holes, and, in general, lending a hand with some of the more mindless aspects of what goes on there. The endproducts of our efforts form wheelchair ramps which are then shipped nationwide, although I still remain mostly ignorant of how the pieces fit together. As with anything new, I’m still learning wha...

Student Teaching: A Journey Long And Strange

Yesterday was my last day of student teaching; anunexpectedly bittersweet conclusion as, delighted as I am with my newfound freedom, I actually found myself a little sad to say goodbye to the kids. Maybe this is a further sign (alongwith others here and therethroughout the semester)that the teaching profession is a good fit for me, or that I’m a good fit for it.

To be totally honest, I wasn’t 100% certain of this all semester. I consider myself something of an academic, comfortable with books...

Thanksgiving Break In Summary

Over the course of my Thanksgiving break from school last week, I had a number of occasions when I thought I ought to sit down and compose a blog post. I certainly wasn’t suffering from lack of material, nor from a lack of leisure time that could be put to such a purpose. I could write about my trip to the Operation Christmas Child packing plant, I reasoned, or about the nice visit I had with my family on Thanksgiving day, or about my first-ever attempt at playing disc golf (I lost. Go figure...

Jayber Crow

Fiction has a unique way of illuminating truth for me, of turning on portions of the brain that otherwise sit idle, helping provide shape and substance for intangible ideas and emotions. This is a part of the reason I like to write, I suppose, andit certainly is a prime reason why I like to read. Stories are entertaining, of course, but every now and then I run across one that turns out to be more than that– something special. Out of the blue, I’llbe blindsided by a book that speaks to me in...

The Periodic Table of Storytelling

This is absolutely delightful. I can take no credit for the following chart, but I wish it had been my idea first.Someone has made a periodic table listing various tropes of storytelling, and, althrough it is largely intended as a joke, it can serve as a strikingly accurate way to describe any number of stories, diagramming them like molecules in chemistry. Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself.

http://aerogrammestudio.com/2013/11/12/the-periodic-table-of-storytelling/

I want a poster pri...

h3ll0 w0rld (Joshblog Version 3.0)

This is my third first blog post, by which I mean the beginning of my third attempt at blogging.

My first attempt was nearly a decade ago, before Facebook became the gold standard for internet social networking (goodness, has it been that long?). It was a journal of the young-man-spouts-his-unfiltered-emotions-for-everyone-to-read sort, a dour exercise in egocentricism and immaturity that eventually spiraled into a much-deserved deletion. After that ill-fated attempt, I swore off blogging alto...

Nightmare Stalkers & Dream Walkers

Just in time for Halloween, Horrified Press has released Nightmare Stalkers & Dream Walkers, which includes my tale of psychological terror “If You Should Die Before I Wake.” If you’re interested, you can check it out here.

Pantheon Finds A Home

I am absolutely delighted to announce that my first novel, Pantheon, has been accepted by Urania Speculative Fiction, the sci-fi/ fantasy imprint of Musa publishing. Stay tuned for more updates.