Firewater’s Vignette #6: Halloween at the Boneyard

The first skeleton appeared outside Walker Drug Store at 8:14 a.m. It sat on the bench beside the newspaper machine with perfect posture, ankles neatly crossed, one hand folded over the other like a man waiting for his wife to finish picking up a prescription. It wore sunglasses. For at least twenty minutes, people ignored […]

On What Horror Is (I ain’t afraid of no ghosts)

Horror is never really about the monsters in the dark. The monsters are creatures or beings that can be opposed. That’s traditional narrative conflict—protagonist versus antagonist. That can be exciting. Certainly it can be spectacle. But it isn’t horror. Horror is the darkness that conceals the monsters. It’s the uncertainty. The hidden truth. The realization […]

Them — warning: this is about pronouns not about giant mutant ants

You won’t often catch me talking about pronouns. Not because I don’t have thoughts — oh, I have plenty — but because it’s one of those subjects where people already start reaching for torches and pitchforks the second you open your mouth. So I guess it’s your lucky day. You already know what I mean […]

In the Writers Room (with Firewater) #26: What to Write?

We tend to write the things we enjoy reading, that’s true. But that still leaves a lot of terrain to cover. Do you write short stories or novels? Both have their own gravitational pull. Short stories are surgical strikes — intensity and precision. You’re in, you devastate, you get out. They demand efficiency, discipline, and […]

Trigger (not a post about Roy Rogers’ horse)

One of the funny things about being human is that we almost never react to the present like it’s actually the present. We like to pretend we’re logical creatures, calmly responding to whatever’s in front of us. But the truth is, most of us are carrying around a whole attic full of old hurts, embarrassments, […]

“The Edge,” by Firewater — a short story

The morning in Bend began cold, the kind of sharp autumn chill that made the hotel parking lot smell faintly of pine and exhaust. Dan Maddox stood beside the white USGS truck, sipping coffee from a paper cup and watching his breath drift into the pale air. Michael Whitaker pushed through the lobby doors a […]

\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, Episode 22: “Becoming (Part 2)” (airdate: Tuesday, May 19, 1998): Part 3 of 3

30:01 – The End Previously on \m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/ . . . Part 1 & Part 2 Buffy Summers, the Slayer of the title, takes bad-boy vampire Spike home to meet her mother, and then she reveals that she’s a Vampire Slayer to Joyce, who responds by telling her daughter that if she leaves not to […]

Face Blindness—My Wife’s Affliction (and my antithetical condition)

My wife has face blindness, I believe. I didn’t even know this was a real thing until we were watching a TV segment announcing that Brad Pitt—yes, that Brad Pitt—has it. Suddenly the clouds parted, the angels sang, and several years of my wife confidently greeting total strangers as if they were long-lost cousins finally […]

GIGO (Or, a brief digression about management science, inputs and outputs, creativity and whether or not I’m destined to produce only garbage)

The acronym GIGO—“Garbage In, Garbage Out” is usually introduced as a cautionary principle in computing. It warns that flawed input produces flawed output: if you feed a system bad data, you should not expect meaningful results. I first encountered the term while studying Management Science, learning to program mainframes in Fortran, BASIC, and COBOL. At […]

Let’s Build a Playlist!

If I haven’t mentioned it before—and we both know I have—my next novel revolves heavily around dreams and dreaming. It’s a subject I find endlessly fascinating. The seed of this novel was planted decades ago, and the central idea hasn’t changed all that much since then. One of the things I do to maximize my […]

Going to the Movies (with Firewater)

Back in May, a blogger who writes under the handle A Middle Aged Geek posted an article titled “The Old Days” about his on-again, off-again relationship with the theatrical experience. It hit close to home for me because, when I was a kid, I went to the movies all the time. Now? Almost never. I’m […]

10-List: Ten More Wise Quotes from Modern Successful Standup Comedians

Bo Burnham “If you can live your life without an audience… you should do it.” Nate Bargatze “I’m not smart enough to know how dumb I am.” Mark Normand “Comedy is just tragedy plus time… and bad timing is just tragedy.” Bill Burr “Realize that sleeping on a futon when you’re 30 is not the […]

Scatterbrained

Has anyone ever insulted you with something you couldn’t even get mad about because, deep down, you agreed with it? Take “asshole,” for example. That one never lands on me the way people intend, because I fully acknowledge that I can, at times, be unpleasant, difficult, sarcastic, dismissive, stubborn, or generally exhausting to deal with. […]

\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, Episode 22: “Becoming (Part 2)” (airdate: Tuesday, May 19, 1998): Part 2 of 3

15:01 – 30:00 Previously on \m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/ . . . Part 1 & Part 3 Buffy Summers, the Slayer advertised in the show’s title, escapes from the police after being found in the Sunnydale High library, standing over the cooling corpse of Kendra the Other Slayer, who was killed by Drusilla when Rupert Giles was […]

Looking Forward (October 2026): A Detour into Psychedelia

This is the quadmonthly happiness report for October 2026. Our belief here at FirewaterCorp is that happiness is defined as always having something to look forward to. In our world, choices in entertainment play a huge role in this pursuit. Our company motto is “Read. Play. Watch. Listen.” And then, of course: “Write About It.” […]

10 Years After . . . a nostalgic linguistic side-trip

I published this post way back in 2016, not long after I joined WordPress. I think two people read it back then. If you were one of the two, I apologize for repeating myself.

Journal of a Novel: WIP Update: Act I Completed

It’s 9:32 PM on Sunday, August 2, 2026, as I type this. I just finished, mere minutes ago, the polished edit of Act I of my current WIP, a novel I’m calling Secret Origin. At this moment, on the eve of beginning the edits on Act II, I’m sitting at around 26,800 words and 128 […]

10-List: King of the Nerds

If you lined these ten up for a “King of the Nerds” coronation, you’d basically be watching the culture admit it has been nerd-run the whole time, just with better lighting and bigger budgets. J.J. Abrams is the guy who treats mystery boxes like sacred objects and then immediately hands them to an audience like, […]

In the Writers Room (with Firewater) #25: Slow Down, You Crazy Child

I’ve written before about the three main components of all fiction. Not my original idea, mind you—who am I? No, this one’s been around forever, but I first remember seeing it in Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. King (and other authors before him) argues that all fiction rests on three pillars: […]

Rack ‘Em Up – (Or a brief digression about functional alcoholism, failed marriages and—-oh, yeah—my history with the game of pool)

My history with pool goes back a long way. Before I was old enough to be in a bar, I spent plenty of time in the seedy pool hall at the bottom of Mill Hill, down by the train trestle. I’d walk or bike from home, usually sticking to the tracks to avoid traffic. At […]

\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, Episode 22: “Becoming (Part 2)” (airdate: Tuesday,May 19, 1998): Part 1 of 3

Part 2 & Part 3 00:00 – 15:00 On this day in history . . . DMX’s debut album, It’s Dark and Hell is Hot, was number one on the Billboard 200 chart. Deep Impact was the number one movie in theaters. CDs are becoming the dominant music format as sales of cassette tapes continue […]

The Writer: an owner’s manual

The compulsion to write doesn’t afflict a huge percentage of the population. Most people, thankfully for them, can experience a thought without immediately feeling the need to pin it to paper like a Victorian naturalist mounting a rare beetle under glass. They can go for a walk, have a conversation, survive an awkward family dinner, […]

Hiatus (how I spent my summer vacation)

Just to recap the novel-writing process that has produced the best results for me in recent years. First, I tell myself the story in a bout of lawless freewriting I call the discovery draft. Most writers would probably call it an outline or a rough draft, even though it’s clearly neither. And both. Then I […]

“Cold,” by Firewater — a short story

No one likes watching police shows with a cop. I learned that early in my career. Friends would settle in for some police procedural, and there I’d be, pointing out every corner they cut, every procedure they botched, every “enhance that image” moment that would get you laughed out of a real lab. Doctors probably […]

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