An Essay wherein an Author of a Chapbook of Very Smol Stories muses on the 12 micros and flash fictions in the Collection to see if any “Research” took place.

My first novel started with a practically unknown historical person. To bring her to life, I researched the few available references, envisioned her in a scene from my developing plot, and watched her personality emerge.

I set the stories in Toledo because that was where I started my legal career. With Toledo as the backdrop, I could summon the emotions and anxieties of a young associate.

This is how you throw a cup. It starts with a ball of clay of uniform texture, stuck firmly onto the center of a pottery wheel.

My forthcoming novel, The Last Supper follows three chaotic months in the life of Amanda—a mother of two young children who has just turned forty—who is desperately trying to reclaim her economic and creative agency. 

Research has always enriched my creative activities as a writer, much more than just as a way of finding useful information for my books. I do research in order to write. I use the reading I do for my books to provoke composition.

I always wonder how other writers let go of their characters, because I can’t. 

Writing requires invention. Choosing which words, which scenes that will make the beginnings, the middles, and the ends is an inherently creative act. And yet we all know that writers cannot possibly invent the world.

My idea, then, was to write a work with a satirical tone but where every detail was grounded in reality (there are three lies in the book, of which two are uttered by characters and not the narrator, we’ll get back to the third), hoping that this would help loosen the springs of the genre.

The Hitch is about a woman whose life explodes when her six-year-old nephew confides he is possessed by the soul of a dead corgi. Last month a journalist interviewed me about the novel and, in response to a question about horror fiction, I rattled off all the books with possession plots I had read as…

My anxiety first manifested when I was a kid. I remember my mother sitting up with me at night, coaching me through paralyzing fears of humiliating band rehearsals and lunchtime bullies, instructing me in what I would now call meditation and mindfulness. 

I’m an old-time radio fanatic, specifically OTR detective shows. One of the things I love is their language. It’s deliciously pulpy, full of 1940s and 50s slang and over-the-top metaphors that a modern author could only wish to get away with.