J.W. Donley

Author: J.W.

  • A Return to the Dark Tower – Revisiting My Friends from the Ka-tet of Nineteen

    A Return to the Dark Tower – Revisiting My Friends from the Ka-tet of Nineteen

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    I first read The Gunslinger way back in my college years. It was a strange experience. I’d yet to read any Stephen King at that point. I’d read Lord of the Rings a few times plus some classic science fiction (plus the stuff they force-fed us back in AP English, but I don’t count that).…

  • Joe Reviews | Man, F*ck This House by Brian Asman

    Joe Reviews | Man, F*ck This House by Brian Asman

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    I had a blast reading Man, Fuck This House by Brian Asman. And, I was not surprised one bit to learn that Max Booth III played a part in bringing this wild tale of a topsy turvy haunted house into the world.

  • JW Reviews: HaHa

    JW Reviews: HaHa

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    HAHA is another series of (slightly) interconnected dark stories, but they all involve clowns. Each issue uses a different artist, unlike Ice Cream Man, and it’s a lot of fun seeing how each story is presented in different styles.

  • Five Stories Ya Gotta Read – June 2020

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    This is the start of a brand-new series of blog posts. Each month I will share with you five stories that I’ve read recently that you should look into. ‘Wilderness’ by Letitia Trent from Exigencies ed. Richard Thomas Recently I took a course on contemporary dark fiction, and this is the first short story we…

  • Five Stories Ya Gotta Read – July 2020

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    It’s time for another Five Stories Ya Gotta Read! ‘Rust and Bones’ by Craig Davidson from The New Black ed. Richard Thomas. This was my very first read of anything by Craig Davidson. It is the vivid story of a broken boxer’s life. You feel every bone crunching punch and the blood spray from head…

  • Just an Update

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    Wow. Life is crazy right now. Isn’t it? I’ve had less and less time to create content for my blog as of late. Too many projects. Too much anxiety. Sometimes I need a break where I binge watch some series over a weekend with my family. And, unfortunately, my blog is the first thing to…

  • What I Learned from Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

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    This book blew my mind the first time I read it. I finished the whole thing while on flights for work in December of 2019. I’d never read anything quite like it. Warning: minor spoilers ahead. Before reading this book, I was convinced that there was an unspoken law that authors were not allowed to…

  • Writing in the Time of Covid

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    I don’t know about all of you, but since the Covid-19 pandemic has engulfed the world my writing output has suffered. I want to write. I really want to write. But, some evenings, all I accomplish is staring at an empty page. In the last month, I’ve finally started to come out of my productivity…

  • 20 Short Stories That Inform and Influence My Fiction

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    Occasionally, someone will ask me what stories and authors influence my writing. That is a difficult question. Really, everything a writer reads in some way influences our writing. It all pushes or pulls our work in some direction. When I read a story that doesn’t work for me, I learn that I should not attempt…

  • What’s It Like To Take A Long Intensive Writing Course?

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    My Contemporary Dark Fiction writing and reading class is finally over. Well, almost over. I still have a couple assignments to turn in and I owe critiques on my classmates’ stories. Want to know what it was like? Is a class like this something for you? Read on to find out. I will have 4…