Category: meta
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Ghost Girl & Reshaping Old Tales
“Ghost Girl” is a queer reshaping of Scandinavian murdered child folktales.
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Stories That Changed My Writing
A good story lingers long after it’s been completed. A great story changes something for the audience. In my life I’ve been enormously lucky to have come across many stories which have shaped my writing. I was reflecting on these stories when I decided to create a list of the ones which were most influential.…
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The Minutiae of Life
I’ve been struggling mightily with my current project, a novella I have been working on since 2016. I have persisted through four drafts now, and I hope that the current draft, the fifth, will be closest to what I have wanted the project to be from the inception. But it’s been so damn hard to…
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Theater is Dead; Long Live Theater
I recently came across someone’s blog post where they lamented theater in a COVID-19 world. They claimed that without live performances and human interaction, theater is effectively dead. Really. Because from where I’m standing, my students have access to plays via streaming services online. Just this last week I saw a dramatic reading of a…
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Power and Control
Facebook spits out old posts — “memories” — and sometimes it yields something fascinating or insightful. This morning, I had an old post presented to me, one which is still timely:
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Visiting the Precipice
I just got back from a play in which a mother kills her child and then kills herself. I found the conclusion satisfying. It made sense for the character’s arc. But most of all I found the “perversion” of such acts deeply satisfying. I enjoy the “fucked up shit”. There is a reason I surgically…
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It’s Just the Hours He’s Been Keepin’
It’s hard to pen criticism of a TV series which has had only one episode. Yet that is precisely what I will be doing with Prodigal Son. On the surface it seems like a novel idea: a TV series about the son of a serial killer, who is a gifted yet haunted profiler. The problems are…
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In Want of a Husband?
I just finished watching Becoming Jane, and while I was glad to have done so, I found parts of the story hollow. In some parts they teased us with a Pride and Prejudice Darcy/Bennett like budding romance between Jane Austen (Anne Hatheway) and the dashing Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy). When the characters finally surrender to their affections, the…
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A Slice of the Murdering Pie
I recently rediscovered a short story I had written a few years ago, featuring an absolutely wicked queer couple. It is the antithesis of what I usually write, which is quaint domestic character studies. And I thought the story was fantastic. A fun, murderous romp. I remember writing it and believing “no-one will ever publish…
J. S. Kuiken 