Kristin McTiernan

I got rid of Facebook earlier this year. But before I did, I used to follow "The Minimalists." Theirs was a community based on downsizing your life, living more simply through fewer possessions, less debt, and more time with people and pursuits that matter to you. I was struck by one of the last posts of theirs I saw before I left Facebook.

On the weekend before valentines day, The Minimalists posted several anti-consumerist posts, some memes, some just short paragraphs. All of them made the point that giving gifts was ultimately a destructive practice, that it is not a love language, but rather a habit. They also said giving diamonds is not giving love, but rather ostentatious overspending. Sounds pretty reasonable for people who adhere to minimalism, right? But holy heavens, the comments section.

There were accusations of Communism, of misogyny, of ingratitude. And these were not one-sentence rebukes. These commenters were MAD. It makes you wonder about such an extreme re…

I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"I Liked My Life" is a masterful study of grief, life, and the secrets we keep. After Maddy, loving stay-at-home mother, commits suicide, her daughter Eve and husband Brady are left wondering why. The book would still be great even if we kept our sights on those two as they worked through their issues. But we also hear from Maddy herself. Stuck between life and death, Maddy has unfinished business, so we see her attempts to influence the family left behind and rectify some of the fallout, all while hearing about the life they lived before... and after. By all accounts, Maddy did like her life. So why did she kill herself?

I've often said the best books make you examine how you would react in a similar situation, though I found myself fighting against it in this case. I still have both my parents, and the thought of losing either of them, particularly while I was still a teen, is simply unbearable. Fabiaschi paints…

Ask a Manager is one of the very few blogs I follow. I check it every single day, delighting in the professional debacles the letter writers find themselves in. Unfailingly, Allison provides spot-on advice, emphasizing professional norms, office culture, and employment law in her responses. To be honest, her site is the reason I made Tess, the protagonist of my upcoming novella, an HR rep. I've never worked in HR, so reading Allison's site and seeing the absolutely unthinkable behavior of some employers made me grateful for literally every job I've ever had. Even the awful ones, because they were still better than some of these poor people's jobs. Don't believe me? A boss directed an employee, on pain of being fired, to leave a note at a grave for a worker who was on bereavement leave. Yeah, someone actually did that.

On the July 10 post, something unusual happened: I disagreed with Allison's advice. You can see the hyperlink, so please read it for yourself, b…

On a panel at Planet Comicon this year, I was asked by one of the attendees my opinion for the best social media platform for an independent author to be on. Without hesitation, I answered, "Why, Twitter of course." Twitter is the primary meeting place of journalists, literary agents, and other media influencers. Not Facebook, not Instagram. Twitter. Sending out a well written tweet with just the right hashtag or commenting on the right agent's post could get you noticed, get you sales, or get you a three-book deal.

Grateful for my concise answer, the attendee asked me for my handle so she could follow me.
I had no Twitter. I was not on "the Twitters" as my mother would say. And why not? It was a reasonable question and it caused the Q&A session to momentarily derail. But I felt I owed the lady an honest answer.

1. Almost everything on Twitter is about politics now. Ev. Ry. Thing. No thank you.
2. There are multiple cases of people, regular people... not c…

"...when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

It started with a fascination. There is a story arc in season 3 of HBO's True Blood regarding witches, both traditional female-led European witchery as well as a specific Central American brand of Brujeria, a distinctively male craft. The contrast between the type of magic practiced was fascinating to me. I hadn't even known at that time there were such a thing as male witches, particularly in Mexico, which has a very strong machismo culture. So, as it often does, the idea took hold in my brain and I got more curious about it. It didn't hurt that the actor portraying the male witch, the brujo, was Kevin Alejandro, who is a delight to the senses.


But then my writer's mind took over. What if the brujo in question wasn't a handsome and kind person? What if he was awful? And what if he decided to specifically be awful to you? Well, that would be mighty scary.

Thus, the …