Steven Howell Wilson's Blog

Pardon my adding a preface to an already long piece, but I need to let the handful of people who have been faithfully supporting this blog know that, for now, this is my last update.

Not to be a downer, but… I’m exhausted. Overall. In life. A few months shy of my 60th birthday, I’m looking back on decades of frantic activity, or a consistent drive to always be accomplishing things, and I’m asking, “What the hell was THAT?”

In the word of Basil Fawlty: “That was your life, mate.” “That was qui...

I’ve been working on a novel. Big shock, right? Actually, I have four or five novels in progress, but the one that seems closest to the point of, well, getting written is one that has had me researching everything from Benjamin Banneker to the history of the Kamikaze, from the effect of trauma on the developing brain to the theories of ego and brain evolution. Oh, and I had to study the history of the Dalai Lamas.  In the course of making a lot of notes and brainstorming, I wrote the core of an ...

Okay, right up front: SPOILERS herein.

These first paragraphs are safe. Then you’re on your own. If you haven’t watched Netflix’s mega-popular four-episode crime drama, and you don’t want to know what happens, stop reading when I say, “STOP.”

I am not recommending that you watch the series, by the way. It is intensely disturbing and will probably haunt you. I am not saying not to watch it, either. It is very well-made and the acting and camerawork are first-rate. Each episode was s...

How much of literature depends on undiagnosed sociopathy?

Better question: Does conflict in classic children’s literature depend on undiagnosed sociopathy?

The stories we read as kids—and, for many of us, continue to enjoy as adults—often feature the child protagonists being treated, well, badly by the adults around them. From Tom Sawyer to Harry Potter, from Hansel and Gretel to Oliver Twist, stories in which kids are disrespected, abused, even subject to being fattened for the slaugh...

This is just a bit of silliness that came to me while attempting to refill a prescription this week. I’ve reached the age where I pretty much always have a prescription waiting for me, so I interact with that particular phone menu a lot.

Back during my previous work-life, my boss came to me and said, “I’m thinking of installing an automated phone system on our main number.” I cheerfully responded, “In God’s name why?” I think I also suggested that, if he nurtured a pathological hatred for...

This week, these nine members of Congress from Maryland voted along party lines in favor of a government shutdown. While their staffs flooded constituents with emails about how much they’re doing for the already-displaced federal workers, they voted to stop the pay and the public service of over six million more.

From the House, freshmen members John Olszewski Jr., April McClain-Delaney and Sarah Elfreth joined 44-year veteran Steny Hoyer, as well as Glenn Ivey, Kweisi Mfume, and Jamie Ra...

“…the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

It’s unusual that I quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Overall, I’m not a fan, but the man knew how to make an emotional impact on his listeners. He spoke the words above during his first inauguration to the U.S. Presidency, March 4, 1933.

America was in the middle of the Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in our history a...

I’m posting a bit early this week, because I wanted a little lead time. There’s an event scheduled to begin Thursday. I want people to think carefully about that event.

A lot of my family and dear friends–very nice people–have been sharing a flier calling for an “Economic Blackout” to begin at midnight on February 27th and last throughout February 28th. The flier is headlined,  “As our first initial act, we turn it off. For one day we show them who really holds the power.” It then instruc...

I do.

Well, not for everything that’s wrong, but for one specific American obsession that’s causing us no end of trouble at this moment. That obsession is our unbridled romance with “The Tell-Off.”

Let me back up. I am a huge fan of Norman Lear, and the above statement is mostly tongue-in-cheek. The late, great Mr. Lear brought us, beginning with All in the Family, entertainment that challenged our deepest-held beliefs and forced us to consider the topics that nice people just didn’t t...

Many of my readers (and a lot more readers than I often have!) congratulated me on last week’s post, the text of my Friday night speech at Farpoint. A lot of members of the audience congratulated me too. That was very kind of all of you, and it’s nice to know my words hit home. A writer is a performer, and all performers live for audience feedback.

Unfortunately, last Saturday evening, the parameters I had laid out, for who is and should be welcome at our convention, were tested. That...