Reckon Review

Tag: Wind & Root

  • My Rugby Life. My Writing Life.

    By Chris McGinley I should’ve started earlier. I didn’t begin writing fiction until I was fifty.  Yes, I’m pleased with what I’ve achieved so far.  I’m thrilled to be included in writerly events, to exchange rejoinders with people way more talented than me–Bonnie Jo Campbell, Chris Offutt, Julia Franks, Silas House.  And I’m over the…

  • How to get ahead (by really trying):

    An interview with debut novelist K.J. Micciche By Stuart Phillips This strikes me as a painfully believable story. That was the first line of my critique of K.J. Micciche’s first manuscript from her first workshop at the Fairfield University MFA program. Our group had exchanged excerpts, and we were plowing through in an effort to…

  • Lazy Days in a Tropical Haze

    By Melissa Llanes Brownlee Have you ever wanted to run away to a tropical island? Laze away on a beach, sipping cold drinks, eating food made by someone else, listening to the tide roll in and back out again? I did just that. I flew to an island off the coast of Tokyo and for…

  • The Fractured Mirror – The Fabulous Fiction of Folklore: A Conversation with Icy Sedgwick

    By Edward Karshner Icy Sedgwick is a blogger and host of the Fabulous Folklore Podcast which explores a range of folklore and mythology including its appearance in art and film. She is working on a PhD about haunted house films. When research gets tiresome, she writes dark fantasy and gothic horror fiction. You are the…

  • Adversity: Sacrificing Your Scribbles and the Six Sacred Sentences

    By Barlow Adams Everyone has heard about killing their darlings, but few writers talk about sacrificing their scribbles—at least not directly. We address it in a roundabout way when it comes to drafting, but even then we tend to put a positive spin on it. We are improving. We are refining. Transferring written lead into…

  • Healthy Habits: Intentional Steps Required

    By Valerie Peralta When I started chronicling my journey toward healthier habits in Reckon Review, the stakes were high. I had eaten myself to high cholesterol and the largest pants size I had ever needed. Never one to embrace the phrase “it is what it is,” I did not want to take a spate of…

  • Country Craft: Hello, darling.

    By Stuart Phillips Our home in the country came complete with grapevines, gnarled roots thick enough you needed two hands to encircle them. These vines had seen things. However, fifteen years of neglect had left them exhausted and sprawling across a rickety system of rusted metal poles. They were, to put it mildly, unkempt. I…

  • The Pie Was a Final Draft: Tourist Eyes

    By Michaella Thornton Florida is a myth and an amusement park for its tall tales and figurative language[1]. Astronauts who launched from this place recount the moon smelling like fireworks. A cheesy mini-golf course where the history of swashbuckling pirate queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read is on display at Hole 15. The gatekeeper at…

  • Buried Nitrogen: The Venus Vignettes

    By Sandra Barnidge There’s a new ice cream place in town that’s located conveniently (dangerously) close to both my daughter’s favorite playground and a plant nursery. Every few days, we make a loop that starts at “the bumpy slide,” then passes through the nursery, and then—if you’re good, if you don’t fuss while Mommy looks…

  • Flexing My Creative Muscles: Video Game Edition

    By Melissa Llanes Brownlee I am not a gamer. Not really. But I do play video games during my free time. And when I say video games, I mean those Triple A, holy crap, they are shooting at me, and I have to also manage my resources, and why am I doing this to myself,…