John Wiswell on the Web

Last week, both Richard Gibney and Tony Noland tagged me in the latest big blog game: #mywritingprocess. Like most popular writing games, I...

This is going to be a quick post. I wanted to write an essay Saturday afternoon, but I wrote on We Don't Always Drown until evening, and...

Hi, I'm John Wiswell and I write about tentacle monsters and post-apocalyptic optimism. ...and I write about dinosaurs and gia...

I make it no secret that I love my beta readers. On both of my recent novels I've been gifted with some smart, incisive critiques. But s...

Walk two leagues west of the Cloud Hills and you will see The Ascent, the city that was once the first outpost in this region. It was s...

I'm thrilled to make two announcements today. It's pure accident that they're coinciding on the same day, but it's brought m...

If Sundays are going to become the lit corner on The Bathroom Monologues, then I might as well start with the book I've been hammer...

A golem is the best friend you could have. Forget sexy succubae. Forget conniving imps. Just because they're your species, or have blood...

‘Z’ is for ‘The Z,’ the world’s only zombie reservation. It’s the farthest thing from appearing in any of my scheduled books, at presen...

'Y’ is for ‘yegg,’ individuals particularly interested in safes. Their particular interest is getting inside them and taking their ...

‘X’ is for ‘xenophobia,’ the fear of people or things different from yourself. This is most typically applied to one species’ dislike o...

‘W’ is for ‘Armed Conflict,’ or, ‘Escalating Hostilities,’ or, ‘Police Action,’ or... what's the word...? First he heard them. ...

'V' is for 'vampires,' that mildly evolved undead. An executive zombie, really. According exclusively to one series of accou...

‘U’ is for ‘Uncanny Valley,’ something you’ve doubtless heard of by now. The Uncanny Valley is a titanic canyon dividing the continent...

‘T’ is for ‘Timeline.’ Richard Bon asked for a comprehensive timeline of my fictional world, and while I don’t want to spoil everything...

‘S’ is for ‘sauropods,’ the great beasts of burden in The Frontier. They were considered either extinct or purely mythological for much...

'R' is for 'The Red Brigade.' The Red Brigade is the dominant sect of a disorganized religion worshiping five absent god...

‘Q’ is for ‘Question,’ and the most common question asked is, “What was the first apocalypse to hit this world? What started it?” T...

The menu. ‘ P’ is for ‘People.’ The singular is ‘Person.’ Succubae think you’re not one. Succubae are one of those creatures mos...

‘O’ is for ‘Optimism.’ If the apocalypses have revealed one thing about sentient life, it’s that the optimists are the only ones worth ...