I was doing some wandering this past week and ended up in Portland, Maine, a delightful town that, among its other attractions, is home to the International Cryptozoology Museum. While there are plenty of smaller museums dedicated to specific monsters and critters, the ICM is the only all-purpose cryptid museum in the world, so I knew I needed to make a point of stopping in while I was in town.
And I’ll tell you: I wasn’t disappointed. The museum is relatively small but jam-packed with very neat displays and artifacts. Even as an avid student of cryptids, there were a few creatures featured in the museum’s exhibits that were new to me. I also picked up a new reference book with even more new finds, Loren Coleman & Jerome Clark’s Cryptozoology A to Z:
The question of whether an MFA is worth it pops up on my various social feeds and other online outlets now and then. I’m not going to aspire to answer that question for everyone in this blog post, because I feel like that’s one of those things that doesn’t have a straight “yes or no” answer.
For me personally, earning my MFA was the first step that led me to the career and life I have today. I loved my time at Chatham, which was my first time being part of a community of writers since I studied music in undergrad. Without the degree, I don’t know that I would have had the confidence to go for a career as a writer, so while you definitely don’t need an advanced degree to make a living with words, for me it was the key that unlocked that path.
I’m currently reading Muraski Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji—or the first volume of it, at least, which I think is probably where I’ll stop for the time being, considering the burgeoning height of my TBR stack.
For those unfamiliar with it, The Tale of Genji is often cited as the world’s first novel, written in the 11th century by a Japanese noblewoman. Its main value for modern historians is its depiction of court life during the Heian period of Japan, as the events in the book are thought to have been based very closely on Murasaki’s real-life experiences as a lady-in-waiting.
While it’s called the first novel, The Tale of Genji doesn’t completely hold to what modern readers would expect from the form. It does have characters who recur throughout, and the primary protagonist (Hikaru Genji, son of Emperor Kiritsubo) does age, grow, and change over the course of the plot. I’m using the term “plot” loosely here, though, because the book doesn’t have the tight cause-and-effect type of forward momentum we expect from novels today. Instead, it has more the feel of an episodic TV show—there are threads that run across multiple chapters, but the arc is more a series of humps than an overarching narrative. Other essential features of storytelling today are used, but in a way that modern novelists (and readers) would look askance at, like its cast of roughly 400 characters. Comparing it to modern novels is an intriguing study in how the form has developed over the centuries.
Yesterday, I went to the second annual Squonkapalooza in Johnstown, PA. Similar to events like the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant or the Flatwoods Monster Convention in Flatwoods, Squonkapalooza is a celebration of a regional cryptid—the squonk, in this case, which is one of my favorite critters and one I highly recommend checking out if you’re not already aware of it.
One of the things I went to at Squonkapalooza was a talk by Ronald L. Murphy, Jr. on the meaning of the squonk. During the talk he mentioned some of the animals that used to live in Pennsylvania and are now extinct, like the woodland bison and wolverine. There are others that are officially extinct in PA but are still occasionally sighted, like the mountain lion and wolf. As he said it, if you see a wolf in Pennsylvania in 2024, then you’ve seen a cryptid: a creature that shouldn’t exist in a given place, time, or understanding of reality, and whose existence has not officially been proven.
Like I imagine is the case for many people right now, the Olympics has become my default “on in the background” content since it started. Not because I’m particularly passionate about any of the sports involved—more the opposite, in fact. There’s something very intriguing and entertaining about watching sports I normally don’t think about, or seeing things I’m only familiar with from family picnics being played at an exceptionally high level.
Something else the Olympics makes very clear: sports are omnipresent in just about every culture of the world. This has likely been true for thousands of years. From the original Olympics held in ancient Greece to the ball game of the Aztec and Maya, just about every culture we know about had some kind of sport.
Despite this, I think it’s safe to say that sports are among the most neglected aspects of society in creative writing. You can definitely find examples of sports in fiction and poetry, but not nearly to the same degree as other cultural touchstones like food, music, religion, or fashion.
Brownies have always been one of my favorite mythical creatures. Part of this comes from being a natural night owl and introvert; I feel a certain kinship for beings that only work at night and unseen. But they also intrigue me from a metaphorical standpoint. They work selflessly, never demanding credit for doing chores—but that doesn’t mean they’re creatures you can take advantage of. Ignore them too long, or treat them poorly, and brownies turn into bogarts: malevolent tricksters that steal and make milk go sour.
Brownies are just one of the many little people in world myths and folktales. I’m in the beginning stages of a new novel project that will use a variety of little folk. I’ve been reviewing my folklore research in preparation and thought other writers might also find inspiration in some of these lesser-known little people from around the world.
I have a habit of writing a lot of eating and cooking scenes into my stories. This wasn’t something I realized on my own—my writing group pointed it out, and after that I started to see just how often I use food in my fiction.
There are a few different reasons for this, I think. One is that I came of age reading fantasy series like Wheel of Time,Lord of the Rings, and Redwall, all of which feature frequent, detailed descriptions of meals. There’s also the fact that I spent most of my twenties working in food service and in the spirit of “write what you know”, I end up writing a lot of characters who prepare food for a living.
But, most of all, I think food can be a very useful device for fiction writers in both literary and genre camps. One of the presenters at the In Your Write Mind conference last weekend was Tim Waggoner, who gave a talk on writing with an immersive point of view. One point he made was that the strongest senses—sight and hearing—aren’t the most effective for immersing a reader because they’re powerful enough people can use them from a distance, or even through a screen. To activate our weaker senses—scent, taste, and touch—we need to be right in that environment, and this makes the reader feel right there too when you call on these senses.
I just wrapped up my first experience at the In Your Write Mind conference hosted by Seton Hill University’s popular fiction program—quite literally, in fact; I’m on the train back to Pittsburgh as I write this.
You might think, given how many writing conferences and such I go to in a typical year, that the experience would be predictable by this point, but the truth is that past experience has just taught me not to assume anything. Conferences and conventions vary wildly in just about every respect. I’ve been to some that last a single day and others that last 4-5, conventions with 10,000+ attendees and others with less than a hundred. Most have book fairs or exhibit halls, but not all; some are mostly panels, some mostly workshops, some mostly readings, some a mix of all three—and the value I’ve gotten from going to those activities has been just as wide-ranging.
