Wednesday 4/1/26 I've shown more quit than fight of late--by my standards--so am trying to force myself to redress and reverse that, because I'm in trouble if this is the case and have even less of a chance with everything (or anything) than the total absence of so much as a scintilla of chance that may always be my reality in this world, which one can say doesn't make sense because zero is zero, but which one perhaps wouldn't say even if one was living through this worse-tha

Wednesday 4/1/26 Five games into the season, the 2026 Boston Red Sox had already had a long losing streak than the 2013 and 2018 Boston Red Sox did in the entirety of their seasons. The Red Sox look terrible, and though people will say, "Relax! It's early!" the truth about baseball is that there is no early, just as late comes very late. The pitching has been horrendous. The offense non-existent. This team strikes out like it takes pride in this being the thing it's most prol

Thursday 3/26/26 Need to crank it today. Things to write and send off. Finished a 1000 word piece about the 1961 film The Pit and the Pendulum yesterday. One thing my horror film book aims to do is be a kind of critical reclamation project for a number of directors like Jack Arnold, Edgar G. Ulmer, Terence Fisher, Roy William Neil, and Terence Fisher. I'm adding John Brahm to that list. Rewatching The Undying Monster this morning, so I'll write on that and also have things

Wednesday 3/25/26 I'm putting this here because it amuses me. It's just a text exchange with a guy I know--the man who is the father of the girl I wrote those letters to who is going through some stuff. Today they were at the ER because in addition to that stuff, she has been having these nosebleeds that won't stop. I was working when I got a text from this guy and they were waiting, so I figured I would try and lighten her mood a little and make her smile. When her father an

Wednesday 3/25/26 Also from today. I am writing well. And remember: These people who go first in the prose can only do their bad version of fiction. There's no, "Okay, time to write my brilliant film piece, then my brilliant music piece, then my brilliant sports piece, then my brilliant op-ed, then my brilliant art piece." It's just the one sliver of the one thing, done the same every time, and poorly at that. Always the same. But not this. And not this guy. Edgar Allan Poe w

Wednesday 3/25/26 Ring the bell, it's prose off time! Ding ding ding!!! And in this corner... ...we have David Szalay. He was shortlisted for the Booker Prize--which is one of the biggest deals in the world in publishing, in case you don't know, like the Pulitzer, never mind that even rage-drunk (at the minimum) Mark Warren landed one of those, albeit not for fiction, like those geniuses Junot Diaz and Joshua Cohen --back in 2016, and won the Booker Prize for fiction in 202

Wednesday 3/25/26 Yesterday I signed off on two short stories, "The Sighs Have It" and "Oh No Not That" as complete. Both very short word count-wise. I described them as "starters" to a few people I sent them to, but they're good. And starters in the restaurant sense in terms of what's coming. One of those stories that's coming, or has come, is "Open or Closed," done as of this morning unless I go back and alter it, which I don't envision doing. Also not long word count-wise,

Monday 3/23/26 I'm intrigued by players who have led the league in runs batted in and batting average in the same season but not home runs. It's an unlikely feat and has happened rarely throughout the game's history. I've been thinking of players who did it off the top of my head. Stan Musial, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb did it a bunch, Cap Anson, Todd Helton, Jimmie Foxx, Nap Lajoie, Honus Wagner, Tommy Davis. There are probably others. Don Mattingly is guy who would seem like a

Sunday 3/22/26 I have about a dozen nonfiction pieces to write in quick succession and then I can get back to fiction and book things. To paraphrase the Rolling Stones via Mississippi Fred McDowell and Sam Cooke, gotta move. Op-eds, film pieces, and three music pieces on Jerry Lee Lewis's live albums from 1964, the Byrds' Turn! Turn! Turn! LP, and the song, "I Think We're Alone Now." Located a rare 1968 live version from Tommy James and Shondelles. This is for starters. New

Monday 3/23/26 I've been lacking on the fitness front and for this I am sorry which I can say because I will do better. Ran five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument on Wednesday and Thursday with the accompanying 100 push-ups and three miles walked each of those days. No stairs on Friday or Saturday but the same amount of push-ups and I walked six miles Friday and nine Saturday. I was actually waiting in line at the Monument on Saturday but there were also all thes

Sunday 3/22/26 M.R. James loved the ghost stories of Sheridan Le Fanu like I love the ghost stories of M.R. James, even if James did overrate Le Fanu. In his essay about ghost story writers and what, in his estimation, makes for a good ghost story, James's prose practically burbles in with excitement as pertains Le Fanu's writings, which is rare for James. M.R. James set most of "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" in the fictional coastal town of Burnstow, and then se

Saturday 3/21/26 There was a liar, fraud, and bigot at The New Yorker named David S. Wallace, with the title of fiction coordinator, which, as someone said to me years ago, is pretty funny. Sounds like something out of Orwell or Kafka, but also juvenile. You know how you know when someone's lying to you? I mean, you know when you know, right? Think of all the times in your life when you knew someone was lying to you. There were other times you didn't, but the times you knew,

Friday 3/20/26 Yesterday we had an expansive prose off entry here in which myriad related things were discussed, but this is going to be a minimalist one. Jess Row is among the chosen people of literary class system. He has no ability, the same as all of these people, which takes no time at all to prove. Everything by someone like this is the same. It will be about them, lightly fictionalized. And it's often about writers. Stories about writers. Referencing other writers. Be

Thursday 3/19/26 As one may recall, I recently likened Wendy "The Bag of Hag" Lesser, editor of The Threepenny Review , dug-in classist, unstable, cowardly bully, impressively droning, pretentious, boring writer (maybe we should start pitting some of these people against each other in Boring Offs?), Guggenheim winner (of course), bigot, hooker upper of the "right" kind of people, to the embittered human version of projectile vomit , which I feel confident in saying is the mos

Wednesday 3/18/26 I spent the other night in the company of Bertram and Wooster. Wodehouse is skilled at what he does. My issue with it, as such, is that it only goes so far. His writing is entertaining, but I wouldn't call it great art. I think of it like the comedic analogue to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. There are parameters in place. Art, in my view, must put you position to experience and feel like you are witnessing what I look at as the answer

Wednesday 3/18/26 Let's look at a paragraph, shall we? A paragraph of sheer power and beauty. One that uses words we all know. Words a three-year-old knows. Words we use all the time. But there is no one who would use those words--put those words together--as I have in said paragraph. I've been working a lot on a story called "Still Good" for There Is No Doubt: Story Girls , my book in which all of the stories are about women or girls, and would have to be. That is, you could

Tuesday 3/17/26 Hello, (), It is your friend Colin in Boston again. Just writing a quick note to say that each day when I get up I hope that you have a good day. People often think that a day is just a day, but I look at a day as something that makes you that much closer to where you want to be when you are trying hard. A day’s worth closer. And that’s not a small deal. I was already proud of you for the progress you’ve made (after all, part of being a friend is being

Monday 3/16/26 This will sound impressive, but it wasn't actually as impressive as it sounds, because I had a hard time in the Bunker Hill Monument and it took quite a while--a lot longer than it should--and I was more uncomfortable by the end of everything than I ought to have been, such that I was moving back up my street Uncle Joe from Petticoat Junction style ("That's Uncle Joe, he's a'movin kind of slow..."), but still, the numbers are the numbers and they look okay. I

Sunday 3/15/26 People say Charlie McAvoy is a great defenseman. They don't think he is. People say so and so is a great writer. They don't think they are. I italicized that word to emphasis its actual meaning. To actually think. Go about the mechanics of thinking and thinking through. Do you understand? People say things. They usually aren't thinking at all. They're not vetting for veracity. When they do think, it's about what they're meant to say. What they should say. Wha

Sunday 3/15/26 America: Where there's no problem so big that 5000 more photos of yourself can't solve it. Did it ever really happen if you didn't say that it did on social media? That's where reality comes from, right? Rubber stamp that reality! Most interests for most people come down to two things: the mouth and the genitals. What can I put in my mouth? What can I do with my genitals? And that's going to be it. They're not going to read something, listen to something, think

Saturday 3/14/26 I recently downloaded a high-definition copy of Joseph Losey's 1951 film, The Prowler , starring Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes, with a script by an in-disguise Dalton Trumbo on account of his Hollywood blacklisting, and have been returning repeatedly to it. The Prowler is one of our best noirs, and to me it's a much better picture than 1944's Double Indemnity , with which it shares some plot points. The latter is often cited as the best noir of all, though it'

Saturday 3/14/26 Jaylen Brown needs to give it a rest with the referees. Anytime I see a clip of him, he's talking about the officiating. It takes away from his focus. College basketball makes for better watching than the NBA does right now. These conference tournaments before the big tournament make that plain. There's more flow to the game. The teams go up and down the court. It's a more physical game. The NBA needs to adopt a policy of letting more go. The problem is, the

Friday 3/13/26 Latest cheapie noir for me: Monogram’s Fall Guy from 1947, based on Cornell Woolrich’s bluntly titled story, “Cocaine.” Narcotics were an unusual subject for a film at the time. Here they’re under the surface, so to speak, but you know what’s what and it isn’t good. *** Stayed up late (for me) to watch the Celtics-Thunder game. What a tilt that was, even with White and Tatum out of the C's line-up. If Shai Gilgeous-Alexander gets to his spot around the free thr

Thursday 3/12/26 I'll be getting to the people in charge of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series , these being the people to whom I proposed a book on stairs, who sent my email all around the country. Someone sent me a letter about them recently. I'll be burying these bigots. Exposing them in full, and making that their legacy, as such. I have a lot to get to. A lot to write. But I get to it. And when I bury you, I make sure I bury you right. I also bury you for all to see who