Mario Milosevic

I won the lottery. Two dollars. A one hundred percent return on my investment. I was flush with smugness and contentment. Until my relatives found out. Then I had no peace: Can you lend me a dime? Just until payday? Please? I spent hours prioritizing requests for help. And that was before my interview on [...]

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Here’s Eileen Gunn, in her book Stable Strategies and Others, quoting William Gibson on the secret of writing:
“You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work.”
When I read that sentence I was stunned. It was like he was talking to me because what I have had to overcome is [...]

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Another enigmatic entry from one of my old notebooks:
6 January 2003
He Walked with a lisp.
She Talked with a limp.
Their children went into
A list that must have amused me:
17 Feb 2003 Monday 12:20 a.m.
spots
spat
pot
past
pest
step
Sometimes I see something that sets off strange connections:
5 May 2003
“Doctor Locke”—chiseled into the concrete on the sidewalk next to where we [...]

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We were a close knit group in those days, spending our working hours several floors underground. We knew close to a hundred languages between us, which allowed us to translate any document that came our way during the conflict. That is, until our commander brought us an intercepted missive and told us it was top [...]

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If you haven’t seen “Shelf Life” by Adrian Tomine, the hilarious cover of the current New Yorker, it’s worth seeking out. There’s a teeny tiny version of it on this page and a bigger version on the artist’s website here (currently the 4th box in the top row). It depicts the book publishing process in [...]

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The eclipse stained the moon copper, then the color dripped from the moon’s face like water streaming over a stone in a river. We watched as velvet folds of red light draped the sky then slowly descended over us and seeped into our mouths, noses, and ears. A brief panic ensued. But soon we accepted [...]

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Continuing my wanderings through some of my old notebooks.
I’ve learned it’s usually best to write down things that strike me as very interesting. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that eight years later it will make much sense to me:
24 March 2000
Use pesticide names for names of villians
Blackberries saved my life
Here are some impressions of the rooms [...]

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Drum roll please.
The winner of the first Conditional Realities give away is…… melissa. Melissa, please send your mailing address to mm@gorge.net and I will send you your free book.
Thank you all for entering.
Stephanie: Yes, I used a real live hat.
Paul d.: I plan to mail the book closed so there will be no leakage.
vq: My [...]

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You still have time to enter the first Conditional Realities give away. Just throw your name into the hat at this post by midnight and you’ll have a chance at a free signed copy of my novel.
I’m deep into the research and writing of my newest novel, 2D, and at the same time I’m revising [...]

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This article by Douglas Goetsch in The American Scholar from last year is a marvelous piece about a group of high school kids who learned how to write poetry then set up a stand where they wrote poems on demand and on the spot for anyone who asked. It’s about the most inspiring thing I’ve [...]

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