Benjamin Sobieck

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Honestly, I spent four days completely reading your books, and I realise that you have such an incredible ability.Can I ask how all of that goes into your mind? How do you come up with so much?

re: writing satire
          
          re: re: The Hard Times
          
          I'm up to a dozen or so articles with The Hard Times now, and someone in the chat passed along a brilliant piece of advice on how to approach writing satire. 
          
          Satire is "a new absurd in an old familiar."
          
          How perfect is that?

Listening to the audiobook version of “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” by Annie Jacobsen, and am struck by how close nuclear annihilation is at any moment. 
          
          Also struck by the thought that if there was ever a reason to host a private, breakaway branch of technology, this would be it. If you knew a way to prevent nuclear holocaust, it would be an excellent idea to keep it out of the one-upmanship of the world powers. 
          
          Just a thought. 
          
          My fiction read right now is “Horror Movie,” by Paul Tremblay. Much lighter reading, and everything about the story and physical presentation reminds me why I love books so much. Excellent stuff. 

If America is a business, then government is HR.

Scarves, candles, soup, books, boots, crunch crunch

Moving between stases

The ending of "Tender is the Flesh" is still the one that goes hardest. I'm not spoiling it, but you know from about the third page that Bazterrica can absolutely stick the landing. And she does. This is very hard to do in horror, because so much of the suspense is the anticipation of what comes next. Rising action is easy. Ending it is not. 
          
          What ending goes hardest for you?

Anxiety is experiencing time in reverse. You feel the hot breath of some future tragedy run down your neck, and when one actually arrives, there's a sense of relief. It's all backward.

Congratulations to this year’s Watty awards winners!