I didn’t start reading Stephen King until the summer after college. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I can only remember one time when my parents intervened. I wanted to read Pet Sematary (it had a kitty on the cover!) but I was in second grade, so they suggested that maybe I put that one off for a while. There’s no real reason I put it off for so long, but it generally surprises people that I got such a late start.

I didn’t start reading Stephen King until the summer after college. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I can only remember one time when my parents intervened. I wanted to read Pet Sematary (it had a kitty on the cover!) but I was in second grade, so they suggested that maybe I put that one off for a while. There’s no real reason I put it off for so long, but it generally surprises people that I got such a late start.

A couple years ago I was on a writer’s forum and the discussion was about plotting. Somehow I mentioned that I’d never read Save the Cat Writes a Novel, and someone—a complete stranger—scoffed back that we have to learn the craft. After a moment of internal debate, I responded that some of us had started “the craft” before Save the Cat…

YouTube video by Gordon Lightfoot

This is the other side of the coin: after you tell someone you have cancer, their most likely response is “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” We’re not trained on what to say to bad news, and I can’t say I’ve come up with anything better. The thing is, though, that it puts all of the responsibility back onto the person at the center of the bad news.

It’s kind of ironic that I don’t know how to start this post. Do I tell you that I’m the kind of person who can carry a heavy load but will completely and totally break down at the last straw, baffling everyone who just sees a single straw? Or how I really hate speaking bad news out loud because that’s what makes it real?

Candace Harper and Ceillie Simkiss are one person writing under two pen names. She is a queer, neurodivergent woman living with her family and furballs in the South.She’s known for being the overly en...

On the last day of radiation treatment, one of the techs asked me a very important question: was Duck with me? He’d met Duck on the first day, when I took the photo of the room, so Duck had to be there to ring the bell. Duck Cancer ready to peck the bell. Patients undergoing treatment like chemotherapy or radiation ring the bell on their last day to signify that it’s over.

Alt: From nightmare before Christmas: the ghosts emerging from Jack-o’-lantern during the opening song “this is Halloween“

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My mom is so not the kind of person you’d expect to have tattoos. We’re not entirely in agreement about how many she has. She says three, because there are three specific dots, but they’re all part of the same thing. I was going to count mine as one, except they don’t give you dots for radiation anymore. Honestly I was a bit disappointed, but I’m paying…