In 2026, I'm once again focusing on short stories, so this seems like a perfect time to revive a series of six posts I did in 2024, all focused on short stories. In this series, I cover why short stories are important to read and write, how they're generally categorized by publishers, and how to revise and submit for publication. Finally, I wrapped it all up with a comparison of the two most popular websites for tracking your submissions: Duotrope and Submission Grinder. Why Write Short Stories? Why Read Short Stories? Short Story Categorization Revising Short Stories Submitting Short Stories Duotrope vs. Submission Grinder

I recently crossed the threshold of 50 short story submissions, and I've decided to celebrate that milestone by talking about rejections! For most writers, rejections are a natural part of the submission process, and it’s expected for a short story to rack up at least a few before finding a publishing home. Why Bother? For most writers, feedback on a story comes through beta readers, critiques, or a writer’s group or workshop.

Another year is in the books, and a new one looming on the horizon. Last post I recapped my 2025. In this post, I’ll get into my plans for 2026. Another Year of Short Stories Way back in 2024, I declared it my year of short stories (or YOSS for the acronymically-inclined). I focused on writing, editing, and submitting short fiction on a scale that I had never done before.

The job of a firewatch involves living in a single-room tower deep in the wilderness, monitoring the forest for fires. It’s a job that attracts those seeking solitude—the strange or socially awkward, and people trying to run away from their problems. An Unorthodox Beginning Firewatch begins with a blurred background and the audioscape of a bar. You play as Henry, a drunk college student, and you’re meeting your wife, Julia, for the first time.

It's a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes. Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday.

If writing is my creative first love, video games are my second. Words Deferred is a site about writing, so I mostly limit my talk about video games to the story-centric, like my series about Games for People Who Prefer to Read. Of course, not all games care much about story, and the entire medium has long been lambasted by serious artists for its weak storytelling.

Book | E-Book | Audiobook (affiliate links) Haruki Murakami is a bestselling Japanese author whose novels have been translated into dozens of languages. He’s one of those literary writers who lives in the borderlands of literary magical realism and sci-fi/fantasy. My first introduction to his work was the monstrous tome 1Q84, which is almost 1200 pages. Novelist as Vocation…

It's a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes. Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday.

Book | E-book | Audiobook (affiliate links) Children of the Mind is billed as the final book in the "Ender Quartet." In my opinion, that quartet is really Ender's Game standing on its own, and sequel trilogy that is in many ways tonally different and mostly disconnected in plot. The trilogy of Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and…

I happen to know a painter. Imagine for a moment, that I just moved into a new house, and I decide that I want new art to decorate the place. I tell my artist friend that I’ll pay her to create twenty paintings to my specifications. Now I’m edgy, and I’ve already painted the walls black, so I decide what I really want is a bunch of paintings that look like H.

My "State of the Blog" posts are something I've been doing since the start of Words Deferred. Back when I was posting more frequently, I'd write these every six months. In 2024, I decided to switch to a yearly cadence—and now I dropped the ball and I'm two months late. Previous Posts February 2021 August 2021 February 2022 August 2022…

As usual, Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware has some of the best coverage of the Anthropic settlement. If you haven't been watching this lawsuit, the court determined that Anthropic's AI training falls under fair use, but its illegal downloading of millions of books from pirating websites does not. Anthropic apparently felt it was too risky and expensive to see the case to completion, with the real possibility of a judgement that falls close to the maximum statutory penalty of $150,000 per pirated work.

If you saw my previous post, you know I've been playing the solo RPG "Thousand Year Old Vampire" recently. I enjoy the game, but like so many TTRPGs, the source book is heavy on rules and light on examples. With a few rounds completed, I thought I'd offer some tips for new players, to make the game more fun and easier to run.

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Thousand Year Old Vampire is a lonely solo role-playing game in which you chronicle the unlife of a vampire over the many centuries of their existence, beginning with the loss of mortality and ending with their inevitable destruction. I happened across this little hardcover book at a games store in a mall near my house. I was there to have the failing battery in my phone replaced, and I had some time to browse and meander.

It's a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes. Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday.

Book | E-book | Audiobook (affiliate links) Xenocide is the third book in the Ender series, after Ender's Game (link) and Speaker for the Dead (link). I read the book decades ago, and remembered almost nothing about it. I'm now reading it again with my daughter. The plot is split between two worlds and sets of characters. On the planet Lusitania, the story of…

It's a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes. Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday.

Book | E-book | Audiobook (affiliate links) I purchased this as The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 1 double feature—which contains the first two novellas in the series—so I immediately jumped into this story after completing All Systems Red. While the first story in a series has to introduce characters, introduce a setting, and set the tone, this is really not very different from the requirements of a stand-alone story.

It was only a couple weeks ago that I posted a poem while claiming that I don't write much poetry. And it's true, honest! But it just so happens that I've written another one. I recently went on vacation with my family to a national park. I really shouldn't be, but I find myself perpetually shocked by the human propensity to deface the most beautiful places with little bits of graffiti.

I like to think I'm not a materialist, but I do have a propensity to buy too many books. This year I've been working on buying fewer and reading more. I'll get through that TBR list some day…or some year. Now, I buy e-books and audio books, but I do have a soft spot in my heart for a real, physical book.

It's a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes. Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday.

Reading to my Kids The first time I started regularly reading books aloud in adulthood was shortly after my first son was born. Books for the under-three crowd aren’t exactly high literature, but that’s okay. Babies aren’t discerning consumers, and I wasn’t an amazing narrator. Still, it was clearly valuable. My oldest could turn the pages and recite his favorite books from memory long before he could actually read any words.