Expounding on advice from Sue Monk Kidd’s craft book/memoir ‘Writing Creativity and Soul’
Welcome to 80 percent of a Friday Five. Today’s featured listicle contains only four points, but they are loaded with great information for writers who want to up their game.
If you aren’t familiar with Kidd, she’s the author of the novels The Secret Life of Bees and The Book of Longings and a bunch of other works of fiction and nonfiction. In Writing Creativity and Soul, she draws from her own experience as well as from other writers–Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou among them–to provide some practical and inspiring guidance for writers.
One section of the book that stuck with me was the chapter “About Characters: Four Questions.” Kidd’s advice here is prompting me to think more deeply about the characters that populate my writing, especially the main characters and their nemeses. While Kidd’s focus is on novel writing, I find that the questions she raises can help short story writers flesh out their characters.
‘I’ve spent most of my life writing stories in memo pads, notebooks, and endless Word docs.’
There are a lot of reasons a lot of users have abandoned Twitter (aka X) over the past few years. But one reason for staying connected to that platform–hellscape that it is–is to read some great micro fiction published by a literary magazine you can only find there.
I’m talking about Mythic Picnic, the Twitter/X micro-fiction magazine created by Mark Finnemore and now managed by author and editor Nathan Pettigrew (@NathanBorn2010 on Twitter, which is his primary online address). For the Picnic, Nathan is looking for the brief stories (up to 350 words, including the title and writer’s bio) in a wide variety of fiction. MythicPicnic is also a paying market, which is a rare occurrence these days.
Natham Pettigrew with his beloved dog Brody, who recently passed.
A native of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, Nathan now calls Florida home and when he isn’t writing crime fiction or editing his literary magazine, he works in the healthcare sector. His stories have appeared in Rock and a Hard Place, Thuglit, Bristol Noir, and Switchblade, along with some anthologies, including the phenomenal Bad Intentions: Crime Fiction Inspired by Warren Zevon, which came out July 7 and which I’ve flogged mercilessly on this blog and elsewhere. This fall, his collection of short stories, Tales from Terrebonne, will be published by Rock and a Hard Place Press.
Read on to learn more about Nathan’s writing, his forthcoming story collection, Mythic Picnic, and more.
Told with chilling wit and razor-sharp irony, ‘The Doctor’s Version’ explores power, manipulation, and the ease with which evil can disguise itself as professionalism. Careaga delivers a compelling crime story in which the most dangerous person in the room isn’t the addict—it’s the man utterly convinced he’s the hero.
More than a crime story, it’s a masterclass in unreliable moral perspective.
I hope you’ll hop on over to Substack to give it a read.
‘Community has always been a thing for me, and I saw a chance to give back to some of the writers I admired.’
Ever had a case of the Mondays? Of course you have. But thanks to Shawn Scott Smith, a writer, editor, and pinball aficionado from North Carolina, you can get your week off to a better start by reading a poem or flash fiction piece selected and curated by Shawn via his online literary presence, Mucky Mondays.
Shawn Scott Smith
Shawn launched the project earlier this year, and it didn’t take long for him to fill his calendar for 2026. (I’m one of the lucky mucks to be included in Scott’s publication this year. Check out “Scenes from a Chinese Restaurant,” which Scott kindly nominated for a Best of the Net award.) He will solicit submissions for the 2027 lineup beginning in November.
An accomplished writer in his own right, Shawn’s first collection of poetry and short stories, Telemetry: Poems and Shorts 2014-2017, was published in 2018. His newest book, Atomic Number, contains 117 poems, each one titled after an element of the periodic table. (Check out a couple of poems from the collection.) He’s also been published in a bunch of literary magazines, including Alien Buddha, BULL, Burial Magazine, Dodo Eraser, and Hawkeye.
Read on to learn more about Shawn’s writing journey, the origin of Mucky Mondays, his pinball obsession, and more.
‘I’m interested in what happens when people find themselves at a crossroads and have to make difficult choices’
Michael Downing
BREAKING: Bad Intentions is now available for pre-order. Be the first on your block to purchase it! A portion of proceeds will support Philadelphia-based nonprofit Philabundance.
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When I found out last December that Literary Garagewas looking for crime stories for an anthology of crime stories inspired by the legendary musical master Warren Zevon, my heart sank like a stone. Because, even though I’m a longtime Zevon fan, I assumed poor, poor pitiful me would have no chance in landing a spot in that book, since I hadn’t written any sort of crime/noir fiction since a Perry Mason story I wrote, probably on a Big Chief tablet, in third grade. Even so, I gave it a shot, and now, as I’ve mentioned here before, my Zevon-inspired crime story is one of fifteen to make it into this anthology.
Through this process, I’ve gotten to know more about the guy put in charge of selecting the stories for this anthology (called Bad Intentions), Michael Downing. Originally from New Jersey (land of Springsteen, as Michael will proudly tell you) and now living in Georgia, Michael is an accomplished writer himself. His latest book, Saints of the Asphalt, published last year, is available online and at select bookstores. (Here’s an excerpt.) Over the past twenty years Michael has written plays, published several books, and has had short stories published in numerous literary publications. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times, and his fiction appears in several anthologies, including Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression (ed. S.A. Cosby), On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Anthology (ed. Curtis Ippolito), and Six Sentences Volumes II & III (ed. Rob McEvily).
A literacy advocate, Michael also is the founder and former creative director of StoryTellers, a community-based literacy organization in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and Rome, Georgia, dedicated to helping underserved teens and young adults develop confidence through creative writing and self-expression.
He now lives northeast of Atlanta with his wife Helen, but remains unmistakably New Jersey—attitude, edginess, and Springsteen songs (just not Bon Jovi). Read on to learn about his writing, his work with Bad Intentions, his literary advocacy, and his thoughts about the music of Warren Zevon.
