John Wiswell on the Web

Phase 1 Helen finally tries out for the school play. Danny and Asia hate theatre, but go to her audition anyway, and cheer like it...

“He's not disabled. He doesn't look in pain, I saw him smiling yesterday. Sometimes he jogs; he must, since I've seen him i...

So, yesterday was not my day. While I don't want to go into everything that happened yesterday, it began by burying the family cat, Mars...

It’s hard to believe we ever wanted to kill the Nigh-Infinite Serpent. I mean, I don’t know how you do that, and neither did the Ancients, s...

I had the great pleasure of attending my first Broadway play last week. It was Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Waiting for Godot , whic...

March is on its way out and maybe, just maybe, spring is coming. My boiler is busted and winds are rattling my walls, so it’s cold enou...

I never expected to solve more crime as a reporter than as a bulletproof icon. Yet Simon Magus is responsible for more crime in this ci...

Step 1: make two small cups of tea since your OCD friend stole your big mug. Step 2: sip randomly from both cups. Step 3: watch your OCD f...

I cannot call this book by its real title. At least twenty times in this month I've called it "The Master and The Margarita". ...

The author finds the perfect song. The search is laborious, infinite, and instantly forgotten in a melody inspirational and nonintrusiv...

At 1:10 last night, I wrote the final chapter of We Don't Always Drown . It's 60 chapters long, about 97,000 words, and as in dire ...

Those pixel-stained technopeasant wretches. Wait, what? After Thursday, the plan was to write eleven chapters in seven days. ...

Gravity was a good god, and that was his downfall. He always did his job, pulling things down or together, and did so with such reliability...

Apologies for recent and short-term blogging silence, friends and fellow readers. The biggest thing slowing The Bathroom Monologues has been...

A gorgeous shot from Icy Sedgwick's photo prompts . "Hey honey." "Oh for God's sake, Earth." ...

Discussed feminism with my girlfriend. She didn't understand why I kept walking in L-shapes around her. I explained that I was White K...

It's March 2014, so of course we're all talking about the best movies of 2013. If all the griping on Twitter is any indication, I...

It's March, and that means we're kicking of #NaNoReMo! If you're just checking in, National Novel Reading Month is a support s...

It’s so cold out that he has to build a robot. After he’s shoveled the snow, and cut the wood, and the stoked the fires, his bones are stil...

Probably unrelated? I’ve been wondering a lot lately about how to recharge writing. There are some people who never seem to stop – ...

Toby slipped on the thick leather jacket. He flipped up the collar to shield his neck and cheeks. Next came a second pair of jeans, bucklin...

This March is National Novel Reading Month, dedicated to getting more people to read classic literature. It’s moved back from last year to h...

We laughed at prophecies that we'd be devoured by hollow trees. We didn't know "hollow tree" is arbor-speak for "hou...

I'm on the road this week and so am sharing an updated story. I'll be reading this piece live at Boskone's Flash Fiction Slam on...

My buddy Margit Sage bestowed a Liebster Award upon me last week. These awards are really little blog hops and tend to be fun. While I’ve...

A little while ago a judge erected a statue of the Ten Commandments at the court house in his state capitol. You probably didn’t hear abou...

Bronchitis is a lot like a baby turtle trying to eat a strawberry. This may make more sense in Paragraph 3. Bronchitis and guilt. Of the...

This is a re-post from a few years ago . As I type this on Thursday night I am sick as a dog and not sure if I'll even get up tomorrow. ...

Jeff VanderMeer will soon release the paperback and audiobooks of Annihilation, a novel set exploring the dangerous Area X. It sounds nea...

They were the high school sweethearts who didn’t know they were in love. They ran the school blog, spending long nights figuring out HTML an...