“I like a look of Agony,  Because I know it’s true— Men do not sham Convulsion Nor simulate, a Throe— The Eyes glaze once—and that is Death— Impossible to feign The Beads upon the Forehead By homely Anguish Strung.“          —Emily Dickinson To say I was looking forward to reading Edward Hirsch’s new […]

“It always starts with a blue Volvo, driving away.”  —Still Life Las Vegas In some ways, my book must be a big pain in the ass for my publishers. I mean, they bought a novel, but it’s not just a straight up novel. There’s narrative art in it as well (the twenty-buck term for cartoons). […]

A week on the East Coast. One last hurrah before the blessed regularity of school kicks in. Four moves in six days. Beds of varying comfort. Uniformly good showers (except the one at that hotel where the water was perpetually tepid). These are the ways older folks measure their vacations. First stop: Rhinecliff, in upstate […]

“But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”  —The World According to Garp I knew it was going to be sad, but I didn’t realize how sad it would be. Tuesday, I took myself to the Arclight Cinema to see a special showing of “The World According to Garp” as part […]

Remember those germination experiments in elementary school? The ones where you press a sunflower seed or mung bean into wet paper towels and watch as they sprout, their softened bodies cracking open to release delicate tendrils of life? That’s what’s happening now with my novel, Still Life, Las Vegas.  We’re slowly starting to move from the theoretical […]

Once, many years ago, I had a screenplay I was flogging around town. It was an amusing little ditty about being Asian-American in Hollywood. I had a manager involved, it placed in a screenplay competition, there was actually some interest in the project, but I needed a director to make it happen. A director to, […]

It’s finished. Three long months ago, I undertook a challenge to write a novel in 90 days, with the aid of a book called, uncannily enough, “The 90-Day Novel.” I took with my on my journey my friend and colleague Holly Myer, who was going to draw ninety illustrations in that same time period. How […]

In which we check in our participants of the 90-Day Challenge, one happy and one hapless, at the 2/3 mark, and discover that things are looking up. But not for everyone. Some of Holly’s work James Sie: We’re on day, what? 56? Are you on track? Holly Meyers: Okay, slightly less focused that I thought, bc I’m still technically behind […]

                                             “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” —Michelangelo I won’t lie— it’s been a slog. A month and a half […]