The Winter of the Robots is the first book to be set in my neighborhood, which is called Victory. It’s the northwestern most neighborhood in Minneapolis, bordering two suburbs, and is mostly unknown to anybody who doesn’t live around here. At one point Jim’s mother jokes that Victory is the Edina of North Minneapolis, but you kind of have to be from Minneapolis to get that joke. Continue reading
Leading up to the release of The Tanglewood Terror, I posted a series of short thought pieces on the ingredients of that book called “Tangled Themes.” I can’t come up with a label as good for The Winter of the Robots, but I want to do a similar series. Continue reading
I have Mondays off, so I spend a lot of them with B. at the playground. We have two regulars — the little playground by the school about four blocks away, and the big playground at the park by the Mississippi, which we have to drive to. Either one is fine by B. He just wants to play outside. Continue reading
I’ve been writing about the themes that play into Tanglewood Terror, and have been meaning to write about H.P. Lovecraft, the inspiration for the Max Bailey character (and really, the whole darned book). As luck would have it, this played perfectly in to the terrific author Nova Ren Suma’s series of posts by fellow authors about what scares them. Here’s my contribution, but after you read it, browse through the others — it’s a really great series. Then check out Suma’s imaginative and poignant novel, Imaginary Girls.
Eric Parrish pushes people around. He’s a defensive back, after all. He jokes around with his brother and realizes his brother isn’t in on the joke. He’s a bit of a bully. I sketched out Eric that way before bullying became such a huge topic in the news and before my essay was picked up for the Dear Bully anthology, or it might be even a bigger element of the story. Continue reading
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