Awesome is an overused adjective, but it really is the prefect word to describe my recent trip. This past weekend I went back to Seton Hill University for the first time since I graduated from the MFA program four years ago. I was excited to see some of my old friends and mentors, but I didn’t have any great expectations for the writer’s convention itself. It’s a small con by comparison, so I figured it would just be okay. Boy was I surprised. [caption id="attachment_1428" align="alignnone" width="469"] Chris Kepner, Mark Oshiro, Nat Kimber, and Sandra Kasturi.  Photo by Gina Anderson[/caption] Every single Guest of Honor was fantastic. Seriously. I’m not kidding. They were fun and smart and very knowledgeable in their areas of expertise. (more…)

I’ve decided to keep track of my new favorite author’s metaphors/similes. The man is Chuck Wendig and I’m going to call these Wendigisms. The man is a prodigy when it comes to metaphor and creative use of the English language, the Maestro of Metaphor. I’ll be mining his metaphorical gold nuggets and keeping a list of my favorites. I’ll be mainlining those gold veins like a heroin junkie. That’s right, I’m addicted. I’m sure Chuck, er, the Maestro, could have created a better metaphor there; I am merely the keeper of the archive. He is a writer of many forms, and he pontificates over at Terribleminds. What … are you still here? I’ll wait… This is by no means a complete list, in fact it barely scratches the mildewed linoleum surface, but I intend to keep adding more. These are posted here with his permission. I welcome your suggestions. Here they are in no particular order:

• Built like a sagging brick wall, head like a melting lump of Play-Dough
• art-o-leptic fits of imagination
• squeeze out word-babies
• shoved deep into their colonic grotto*
• slower than a legless caterpillar rolling up a rocky knoll
• A gift basket of hookers
• wriggling free from a uterus made from fractal swirls
• count each pube on your story’s scrotum
• Spit ‘em out like broken teeth
• feel like he’s wearing a tuxedo made of bumblebees
• A hot fresh bucket of words
• we will now refer to lava as “earthjaculate”
• kicked in the junk drawer
• superheroically buoyant
• epic diaper-breach
• fleshy 3-D meatbags
• A burning nugget of possibility tumbling out of the bleak black nowhere
• high on your own stink, huffing your word-fumes
• a swirling hate vortex living in the space between your heart and your gut
• Fatigue nibbles at your marrow like an army of tiny chipmunks
• ejaculate your DNA into every cell of that story
• suicide shoes
• sky the color of a bruised cheek
• pinnacle of paroxysmic pleasure
• You need to master Manuscript Lovemaking 7
• Progress tastes like bacon
• Embrace the rewrite. From behind.
• It’s time to blast my six-shooters at the words and make those pesky f***ers dance
• You pull a mental hammy and s**t your brain-diapers
• work that was as pleasant as a dildo violation
• As if writing is a job on par with “unicorn tamer”
• Other days it feels like you're birthing a lawn chair from your hindquarters
• create quantum entanglement between your butt and your chair so that you write
• right in the catcher's mitt known as your "crotch."
• a thimble full of mouse turds
• align their chakras and birth their story on a beam of light
• bleeding imagination juice on the page
• *poop noise*