Writer and journalist covering money, culture, and the odd bit of how-to. My book, POE FOR YOUR PROBLEMS, is out now: http://amzn.to/3y7XxYi Signed copies: http://bit.ly/2Xy9p9p
Colleen Hoover: The baroness of bestsellers
Colleen Hoover, CoHo to fans, might just be the biggest author you’ve (possibly) never heard of.
My Book Earned Out in Two Years and Nothing Happened
My publisher’s sales portal updates in massive tranches every few (or two) weeks, so naturally I check it every day. And here was an update—in fact, a huge leap, with total u...
Catherine Baab-Muguira column: Why Poe belongs to Richmond
Four different East Coast cities claim Poe, but he belongs to Richmond. Here's why.
I Just Made a Killing on a Starter Home I Bought for Cheap. I Didn’t Expect to Feel Like This.
A couple offered to buy our house and it made me cry.
Writing From the Brink
Few creative careers that have risen to such heights have also been conducted under so much stress— financial stress, professional stress, familial stress, psychosexual stress—and it shows in his work.
The Business of Being Edgar Allan Poe
Poe is remembered as the inventor of the horror genre, thanks to Halloween-friendly poems and stories like “The Raven” and “The Tell-tale Heart.” But his creative work can be seen as another kind of business enterprise, charting his valiant but often futile attempts to “coin one’s brain into silver.” This makes him an instructive example today, when new technologies mean that creators face some of the very same problems that they did in the 19th century, including an oversupplied market and the proliferation of free content.
How to Deal with Rejection (and Get Revenge) Like Edgar Allan Poe
Doubling down on your ambitions is the best way to get revenge, and no one ever knew this better than Poe.
Edgar Allan Poe is The Perfect Literary Self-Help Hero For Our Uncertain Times
If you’ve read any self-help before, then you know that most of it reads like a 90-percent redacted NSA document obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request—all the most salient details blacked out, unavailable. Exactly how many nannies, for instance, did it take for Sheryl Sandberg to Lean In? If the Rich Dad, Poor Dad guy is such a financial genius, how come he shills real-estate seminars? And if Rachel Hollis really knows how to have a successful, sexy marriage, why’d she get div...
Poe’s ‘Eureka’ Is a Galaxy-Brained Space Opera for Our Times
Edgar Allan Poe articulated the Big Bang theory some 75 years before scientists advanced the idea. At least, that’s become the conventional wisdom.
Was Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ Inspired by an Edgar Allan Poe Story?
I’d like to float a fresh theory about Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 short story “William Wilson,” which I think casts light on Jordan Peele's new movie Us, too.
Failure to launch: Why so many American millennials feel adulthood is a lie
“My mom had five kids by the time she was my age. My dad was starting his second career. And I’m still punching in my parents’ landline at CVS to get the discount.”
Confessions of a TV Tourist
Pam Beesly broke my heart. It wasn’t so much that she married someone else—namely Dunder Mifflin paper salesman Jim Halpert. It was that she first dropped out of art school in New York, schlepped back home to Scranton, and then got married.
How Gaby Dunn found that being 'Bad with Money' can be good for your career
Gaby Dunn can't listen to her own podcast — at least not the early episodes. "I'm really embarrassed about things that I said," she admits, particularly the details she revealed about her bank balance and conversations she'd had with her student-loan servicer. But that's exactly what makes "Bad With Money With Gaby Dunn" so fresh.
The absurd dark comedies helping us survive 2017
When I asked the comedian Chris Gethard if 2017 has been weirder than other years in recent memory, he replied: “Of course it’s been weirder. I’d sum up this year thus far by asking a simple, “What the fuck is going on?’”