That rattling at the door is not in your head, it’s the sound of Sam Flynn’s Cabinet of Curiosities, my new quarterly newsletter with all the book news, publishing insights, writing tips, and mini-reviews you could want. It will go out the first Friday of every third month, starting this…
Christmas came early this year. After a year in the query trenches, my grimdark cosmic horror fantasy The Mystery of the Pale King has found a home at Timber Ghost Press, to be released fall 2024! Thank you Cody Langille for believing in my story (and the sick description I…
2022 may have a few gasps of breath left before the year shuffles loose this mortal coil, but personally I’m already looking ahead to 2023, more for personal reasons than anything. Before I dive in, a shout-out to the awesome Allison K Williams, a multi-hyphenate in the world of writing…
Ah, 2022 (aka 2020, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone), the year of low expectations. Humility does wonders for enjoyment of the little things, the overlooked details that keep us going, the common treasures often left unexamined and the world over is nothing if not humbled by the seemingly-endless pandemic…
You know, it’s amazing. I can write literally hundreds of thousands of words but the moment I sit down for a blog post, I’m on Twitter, or YouTube, or Netflix, or staring off into space, drooling like some deranged mental patient (apologies to all my mental patient readers, checking in…
Tomorrow, I’ll be 28. The first draft of my novel is complete. Happy birthday, me! . . . So what’s next? I must admit, my current situation feels a bit like Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff; if I look down, I’ll fall. I deliberately left much of my…
On the last episode of Sam Writes a Novel, our hero sat atop a pile of words – almost 190,000 – at the halfway mark of 2019. For context, he entered the year with around 120,000 words written, a compilation of outlines, notes, and scattered scenes. The first half of…
About a year ago, facing self-imposed pressure to buckle down and finally write the book I dreamed of, I sought inspiration elsewhere. One of those places was flash fiction, which by nature are quick and spontaneous stories. I wrote a bunch, submitted a few to some contests, and one finished…
In an election that cost only slightly less than what the Koch brothers plan to spend on the 2016 presidential election, we have a serial novel to follow over 2015! Thank you so much everyone who voted. The thing that I realize was missing from my writing was participation; I…
Remember those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories every local library somehow always had? We all cheated, let’s be honest. I remember skimming through those books while I wiled away my days in the library, a second home. I of course would make the bad decision and get killed, reminding me never, ever investigate…
