Kevin Singer's Blog

Power Prompts: Episode 5

The challenge: write a short story in 20 minutes using the following: Characters: Pretty little devil and Stephen King Genre: Alternate history Setting: A boxing ring Trope: Devil in my ear POV/tense: Third/present And the result: Underground “You know you want to do this, don’t you, Stevie boy?” she says as she strolls among the […]

Anatomy of a Story: Envy, a User’s Guide

The origin story for my recently published piece, Envy, a User’s Guide (published here at Eulogy Press) is on one hand simple, and on the other hand, hard as hell. Several months ago I took an online workshop on microfiction. What’s microfiction? It’s one of the latest in a series of subcategories of literature, mostly … … Continue reading →

Power Prompts: Episode 4

We’re back for another round. The challenge: write a story in 20 minutes using the following prompts: Characters: Heart surgeon and Astronaut Setting: A wine cellar Genre: Cozy mystery Trope: A very cheap date POV/tense: Third person future And the result: The Case of the Orange Feather It will be Betty who first notices the […]

Problematic Protagonists: I Saw the TV Glow

Recently I checked out the 2024 indie film I Saw the TV Glow. Ask me what genre it is and I’d have to take a moment. Somewhere in the dark contemporary fantasy camp. Not quite horror but wishing it could be. First off, what it’s about. High schooler Owen befriends an older student, Maddy. They […]

Power Prompts: Episode 3

Bringing back Trope or Choke, but this time live. The pressure’s on to write a story in 20 minutes. The set-up: Characters: A retired witch and a pimp Tense: first person past Tropes: Never too old for an adventure Setting: Backstage at a concert Genre: Historical romance And the result: Love Me Do Her name […]

Read This Book: Sea of Tranquility

What should we do with the era of Covid? As a society? As writers? It’s an understatement for sure to say that it was a difficult time. I look back in anger, and maybe not for the reasons that you might, and that fact makes reckoning with that time period all the complicated–we probably see […]

Anatomy of a Story: The Two Burials of Francisco Collins

Story ideas are all around. You just have to open your ears. You can find them in all manner of places, including a pub in Ireland in a town called Renvyle on the Connemara coast, a pub called Paddy Coynes, small and dark and warm, which would’ve been smoky in another era, over a pint […]

Power Prompts, Episode 2

Here’s the latest entry in the structured, timed prompts series. This one’s called Person, Place, and Thing. The set-up: take ten minutes to write intensively about a thing, a person, and a place (that’s ten minutes for each). And then, take another ten minutes to weave all three into a story. The purpose behind this […]

Anatomy of a Story: My Loneliness Is Killing Me

You might recognize that song lyric. If not, it’s from Britney Spears’ song Hit Me Baby One More Time. Believe it or not, that lyric was the inspiration for my story, My Loneliness Is Killing Me, which was just published in the literary magazine Periwinkle Pelican (note, you have to download a PDF to read […]

Battlestar Galactica Part 5: Some Final Callouts

During my exploration of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica I’ve been pretty non-critical of how they handled the series (See Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 here). Just so I don’t sound like a mindless fanboy, I’ll delve a little deeper into some of my criticisms of the series. After all, nothing in life is […]