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Meg Vlaun

Writer

WELCOME

I am a writer and writing instructor.

Here on my website, Making Words,

have a peek at my poetry, reflections,

book reviews, and publications. Enjoy!

~Meg

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Making Words Count

Dive into the realm of literature with Making Words. Immerse yourself in captivating stories, insightful articles, and thought-provoking discussions. Join me on a journey through the power of words as we explore different genres and styles. Discover new perspectives, engage in literary analysis, and read my publications across the web. Let's embark on a literary adventure together.

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17 March 2025
The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran
Sara Gran is an American author who’s written a handful of novels I’d never heard of before this one. The Book of the Most Precious Substance was recommended to me by my mentor at Regis University’s Mile-High MFA in Creative Writing—and I can speculate why.
The novel follows Lily, a forty-something published author-turned-bookseller, as she jetsets across the Atlantic to track down The Book of the Most Precious Substance for a million-dollar payout. But there’s another reason she wants the book: it contains an erotic spell (centered upon sexual substances) which, if completed correctly, can give you whatever you want most in this world. And Lily wants to heal her husband’s early onset dementia, a task even the best physicians have determined impossible. Obviously, during her hunt for the book, as happens whenever anything worth that much money or power is involved, calamity ensues.

Read full review at megvlaun . com/blog

#bookreview #booktok #booktoker #mostprecioussubstance #saragran #craftreview #bookreviewer

Annihilation, Book 1 of The Southern Reach Series.

VanderMeer is known for his “weird” fiction. Apparently, his work has been called “New Weird literary,” and he’s been dubbed by The New Yorker “The weird Thoreau”—not just for his weird literary style, but also for his Southern Reach Series with its deep focus on biology, ecology, and a sort of apocalyptic environmentalism.

In the book, a biologist (whose name we never learn) serves as a part of an expedition to a sort of abandoned, apocalyptic region called Area X. She is one of a group of four women: a biologist, an anthropologist, a linguist, and a psychologist. During this expedition, our protagonist, the biologist, witnesses as strange phenomena unravel to consume every member of her expedition, ultimately including herself.

In the process of this unraveling, VanderMeer proposes to the reader strange biological/evolutionary mutations and pokes at the concept of universal consciousness. In Area X, all living organisms have begun to amalgamate: fungi to plants to insects to animals to humans. And their consciousness, once merged, is superior to any of those solitary entities in many ways, as evidenced by “the Crawler’s” capacity to take the biologist’s perceived consciousness from her, insert itself into it the way it chooses to be seen, and then give it back to her on its own terms.
Overarchingly, there is a message in this of the consequences of humans tampering with the earth—proposing, in its own way, the Gaia hypothesis: that the earth itself is a living organism that can change and evolve as a manner of self-preservation.

I’d recommend this book to anyone—especially anyone interested in sci-fi, speculative fiction, and/or dystopian and apocalyptic narratives. It was engaging, especially in its portrayal of biology, mutation, ecology, evolution, consciousness, and a not-so-subtle environmentalism.

Read full review at megvlaun . com/blog

@ryancharaba #annihilation #jeffvandermeer #vandermeer #southernreach #bookreader #bookrecommendations #booktok #bookreview

Stephen King’s The Shining

It’s been an undercurrent to my entire life, this book. I was perhaps just 11 or 12 when I first picked it up and devoured it—and remembered certain scenes with such vivid clarity: the wasp nest, the topiaries, the clock. There was something in Danny, too, that I recognized in myself, something a little bit off, a little bit precocious, an ability to see through adults’ bullshit. While I wouldn’t call what was within me a “shining,” per se, it was similar, and because of this, I envied Danny his superpower. While what I experienced was some ostracizing anomaly, what Danny experienced was a sort of magic.

Then, quite problematically, while in college in my late teens, I watched Stanley Kubrick’s movie and that superseded my own memory of the book. The wasp, the topiary, the clock, all were replaced by Shelley Duvall’s haunting face, a bloody tide, twins in blue-checkered dresses, and a hedge maze. Kubrick’s movie ruined my book.

It’s a dangerous thing, I think, to watch Kubrick’s movie and believe that it is somehow representative of Stephen King’s book. While both center upon a small family in a haunted hotel in the Rockies, that is where the similarities end. Kubrick’s movie turns the story into a pile of tropes and fantastical images, leaving the book’s complexities by the wayside.

It was the best decision I made, this winter, to re-read the original. Somewhere deep beneath the surface, somewhere way back in my latent consciousness, I could recollect that there was a reason I loved the book. There was a reason that this book inspired an interest in psychological thrillers, horror, and the gothic, that has lasted me thirty years—the movie could not explain it.

Read full review at megvlaun . com

#stephenkingfan #theshining #stephenking #bookreview #psychologicalthriller #horrorfan #bookstagram #booktok #booktoker #bookstagrammer #bookworm

The King of Double-Entendres: On Stephen King’s Misery

Of course, the most obvious double-entendre is the title itself: Misery is not just what Paul Sheldon, our miserable protagonist writer, endures at the torturous hands of Annie Wilkes. It’s also the name of the protagonist in his popular romance series whom Paul Sheldon kills off: Misery Chastain. This character’s death inflames Annie Wilkes and serves as the inciting incident for Sheldon’s imprisonment in King’s novel. Yes. Like my beloved Frankenstein, this is a story inside a story. Finally, Annie Wilkes has named her beloved pig Misery after the protagonist in Sheldon’s romance series.

Okay. But that’s not really the double-meaning that engaged my imagination in this story. No; for me, it was the writing process. Misery mirrors yet fictionalizes and embellishes the experience of “writer’s block.” This is the first novel King wrote after going sober (he was addicted to drugs and alcohol). Hence all the allusions to Sheldon’s addiction to the fictitious drug, Novril.

King speaks to this in his memoir, On Writing: he was originally convinced that he could only write good stories if he was high (on drugs or alcohol). Thus, his commitment to sobriety must’ve been terror-inducing. His stories were his bread and butter. Misery is about King writing his first story, wrangling that merciless monster of his writers’ block, sober. The shattered body. The pain. The brain fog. Pushing through and ultimately finding that “hole in the paper” into which he could fall, blissfully, to escape reality for hours at a time. All of it was about convincing himself that he could write something worthwhile, sober.

King’s Misery is a novel about how to write a novel. It instructs by showing instead of telling. What Sheldon implements in his story for Misery Chastain, King is likewise implementing in his story for Paul Sheldon.

In any case, King kept me guessing the whole time. The ending was unexpected, but he asked himself, “Can you?” and yes he could.

Full review at megvlaun dot com.

#stephenking #stephenkingbooks #misery #horrorbookstagrammer #bookrecs #bookstagrammer #anniewilkes

Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá: What a Trip

This was the first I’ve ever picked up a DC Comic, and I had no idea what to expect. But Moon and Bá’s book, Daytripper, was one recommended to me by my daughter, whose opinion I esteem. She was right: Moon and Bá’s comic novel is complex, multilayered, and striking.

The story is written in hermit crab form, adopting throughout the genre of obituary (or obits, as our protagonist, Brás de Oliva Domingos, calls them). Brás is a newspaper obit writer, and through that form he explores the lives and associated deaths of artists, footballers, ambassadors, and most notably, his own father, a famous novelist. As he does, he examines the different potential paths of his own life and how those might inform different obituaries for his own death, at ages (in the order they appear) 32, 21, 28, 41, 11, 33, 38, 47, and 76.

Each obit for Brás reflects the life lived in that version of his story, and in the lead-up to each death, Moon and Bá give snapshots of those lives in tiny, big moments: failed loves, love at first sight, births, deaths, friendship, fantasy, relational ups and downs, etc. The intent, it seems, is to show that the greater masterpiece of a life is an artful composition, a collage or montage, of its smallest snapshots.

The art is gorgeous, vibrant, bold, and evocatively colorful. In terms of form and modality, this book is one of the most unique and creative I’ve ever read. The story, as you can see, is nonlinear. Brás successive deaths evoke a sense of fantasy, whimsy, awe, and simultaneous gravity.

If you have the opportunity, read this book. So great.

#bookrecommendations #bookreview #bookreviewer #booktok #bookstagrammer #daytripper #fabiomoon #gabrielba #dccomics #dcblacklabel

13 October 2024

But Aren’t We All Animals?: On Lisa Taddeo’s Animal

**Spoiler Alert**

Animal is the story of a woman who cannot connect with others—neither women nor men—because of her traumatic childhood experience. While Taddeo claims that this is a story of “sisterhood and female rage,” I see it rather as a psychological thriller exploring the emotional and attachment theory impact of childhood trauma, generational trauma, and detached mothers. The plot of the novel is quite simple: Joan seeks a relationship with her half-sister, the daughter of her father and his mistress. Everything else in the book happens via flashback, starting with the moment Joan’s romantic liaison, a married man, blows his brains out in a restaurant when he finds Joan there with a younger man.

Joan is an example of an “unlikeable protagonist.” She cannot connect with anyone in the book. This disconnect from everyone makes Joan hyper-independent and distrustful. Her behavior is anti-social, yet somehow we cannot blame her entirely for her animalistic tendencies because they have direct roots to childhood trauma.

Taddeo’s plot moves very little but is propelled at intervals by backstory—backstory that unravels slowly, giving the reader one bite-sized tidbit of the mystery at a time. Taddeo withholds information about the backstory to create tension, curiosity, mystery. And when we learn about these incidents, the reader has an a-ha moment: this is why Joan acts the way she does.

I hated that I enjoyed this novel. I wanted to dislike it. Indeed, I found some parts of it not to my taste; however, the overarching themes of attachment theory, childhood trauma, and psychology were deeply engaging—and mostly, I loved how it unraveled via flashbacks.

Read full review at megvlaun dot com

#bookreviewers #booktok #lisataddeo #lisataddeoanimal #animallisataddeo #animal

15 October 2024

Point of Direction by Rachel Weaver

Rachel’s Point of Direction is the story of a woman, Anna, who accepts a job as tenant/keeper of a lighthouse in the middle of a channel near Juneau, Alaska, as a means of escaping the world while simultaneously committing to a project—to heal from a traumatic incident in her recent past. The story is a psychological mystery/thriller, but without any horror or gore. Weaver draws out the mystery of her protagonists’ traumatic incidents the duration of the novel, and we are given to wonder why they make the choices they do, why they relate the ways they do, until the very end.

In Rachel’s workshops, and when she was my mentor, she instructed that the events prior to the inciting incident should not contain backstory. This novel is a testament to that guidance: Anna’s backstory is dribbled out in hints and clues throughout the first half of the novel, only given to us in full by about the halfway mark. Kyle’s is dribbled out in clues the entirety of the novel; we do not learn his full story (and indeed, he himself does not) until the novel’s climax. This draws the reader forward, not from confusion but from curiosity.

One thing Rachel instructed in our last workshop was to lay out the scenes of your story like a train, introducing new questions/mysteries at intervals, and answering them at intervals—but always withholding some answers until further down the road. For example, we don’t know whose phone number Anna keeps on a tattered note in her pocket until the second-to-last chapter, although it was introduced, I believe, in the first chapter. Likewise, we don’t learn that Kyle’s father is still alive until the third half of the book—and don’t learn why he abandoned Kyle until even later than that. The result is that as readers, we don’t really know why the protagonists behave the ways that they do until far further into the story—which works.

Rachel’s novel is instructional in withholding critical information in a way that doesn’t frustrate the reader. It’s always a delight to read my mentors’ writing.

#pointofdirection #rachelweaver #bookreviewers #mysterybooks #regisuniversity #regisuniversitydenver

10 November 2024

Masterful Foreshadowing:
Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

I read this one because I saw that there was a new 'Salem’s Lot movie coming out on HBO Max—and I couldn’t stomach watching the film without first reading the book. King was my first writing instructor, after all, as I read all his classics starting in 6th grade. We go way back.

Most of this story’s tension and mystery lies not in unknown backstory/motives but in the question what will they do? Indeed, King provides backstories immediately as we encounter each character, so there’s no real mystery there. The most deeply developed mystery of the story is why do they go back? And here is where King weaves in the long-standing undercurrent/theme of the fire that incinerated the city in the 1950s. There are, almost curiously, numerous mentions of this town fire throughout the story…so perhaps I should’ve recognized its significance. Subtle! I love the way he planted that seed early on and then brought it full circle in the ending. It gives a satisfaction that I’d like to give my own readers.

Overall, it was an enjoyable (if simple, again) read. King adheres to standard novel-writing expectations, such as dialogue mores, italicization of thoughts, paragraphing, chapter length, etc. The main characters worked well for the plot, even if they were underdeveloped (to my taste). I did notice that in the HBO Max version (which was awful, by the way, don’t bother watching), the producers replaced Jimmy Cody’s character with a black woman. This made me reflect upon the too-few female protagonists in King’s cast of characters. Quite valid.

While there are some universal themes woven throughout this text, mostly it was an enjoyable diversion. To my taste, far better than smut. For that reason, I’ve now picked up Misery. Can’t wait.

#bookrecommendations #bookreviewers #stephenking #stephenkingbooks #salemslot #salemslotmovie2024 #horrorfiction #vampires

A Simple Sample: How Can I Help You? by Laura Sims

This book is written in the first-person PoV, shifting between two main protagonists: Margo and Patricia. The chapters do not always shift back and forth; consecutive chapters may be dedicated to Margo or Patricia, as the plot requires (so that is a notable difference from mine and worthy of consideration). As such, there is a tenor/tone/persona difference between the chapters written as Margo and those as Patricia—but it's not exactly stark. It’s subtle but sufficient.

The plot is one of steady revelation: we learn the details of Margo’s sordid history at about halfway through the novel. From there, the mystery becomes what will she do? As opposed to what has she done?

The writing, storyline, and characters are simple. Sims does not seem to play with vocabulary, imagery, themes, etc., as much as I prefer to do. Further, her characters, although we understand their motives, do not have fully fleshed backstories. We spend almost no time whatsoever in either protagonist’s childhood/upbringing. We do spend time in their young adult histories, though (Margo as a nurse and Patricia with the boyfriend who quashes her creative drive). Sims uses these to devise motive. The plot has a limited timeline (just a few months), limited settings (mostly the library), and only a handful of supporting characters to propel the plot (sufficiently developed that I could envision them in my mind). It’s remarkably simple at just about 70,000 words.

Read full review at megvlaun dot com.

#bookrecommendations #bookreview #laurasims #howcanihelpyou #quickread

Amy Lee Lillard holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Cedar Crest College. She’s published both fiction and creative nonfiction in literary journals such as Adroit, Foglifter, and Vox, among others, and received the Iowa Author Award in 2023. Lillard learned she was autistic at 43, and A Grotesque Animal is a collection of her creative nonfiction essays showing how her autism has intersected with various other experiences (romance, sex, friendships, family, writing, career, etc.) Because for generations autism has been diagnosed only in young boys who fit a particular mold, many women Lillard’s age (and younger or older) are being diagnosed later in life. This phenomenon is sweeping through our culture right now, perhaps prodded by social media, where the overlooked and the alienated are finding like-minded communities online, then self-diagnosing with the RAADS-R (or with the help of a clinician—although this is more costly and rare).

In one chapter, Lillard explores the concept of autistic masking, comparing it to other masks and mask metaphors. Another, written in the very challenging second person “you,” is directed at herself, exploring her wants, her pains, her alienation, and her only possible path forward in a world designed by and for neurotypicals. Still other chapters explore her relationship with her family, in particular the women of her family, her mother and grandmother, who denied their own neurodivergence, disguising it with catty competition, slights, and insults. There are chapters about men, violent men, indecipherable men, with the guidepost of her father whom she does not understand, and her semi-strategic use of sexuality in an attempt to connect, to belong, to fill the void of living in a society where she feels eternally “other.”

Lillard’s collection gives me hope for the growing community of late-diagnosed autistic women.

Read full review at megvlaun dot com.

#autismawareness #memoir #bookreview #bookrecommendation #latediagnosedautistic #bookblogger

24 August 2024

Some imagery from my Morning Pages a few days ago slapped together and labeled "a poem."

Anyone else love/hate those gravitron rides at theme parks?

#timeisaconstruct #gravitationalforce #gravitron #badpoetry #nausea #ontime

Grady Hendrix lives in Manhattan, has published numerous fiction novels, three nonfiction books, and has written for such periodicals as Playboy Magazine, The New York Post, and The New York Sun. As any successful writer seems to be, he is prolific—and busy.

While vampirism may be a tired subject and I don’t believe anyone could improve upon Anne Rice’s legacy, Hendrix did well to make it fresh by setting it in Mount Pleasant, Charleston, South Carolina (as opposed to Rice’s Creole New Orleans) amongst a handful of mostly useless housewives in the 1990s (maybe that’s not fair—they were heroines even if it took them years to get there). He also gave his new-aged vampire some unique qualities and tendencies, factors which invited curiosity, mystery, and interest.

The 1950s housewife mentality that was still relevant in Mt Pleasant in the 1990s too much resembles that of the USAF military spouse. I suppose I can value it more now that I have some distance from it…but still, it is a lifestyle that feels regressive and restrictive. While it was a familiar space for me to inhabit for the book, it was not a comfortable or desirable one. That said, Hendrix did an excellent job of infusing his story with this setting so that it became Gothic in its own unique way. The south is just perfectly suited to the American gothic.

Read full review at megvlaun dot com.

#bookreview #bookreviewer #bookrec #southernbookclubsguidetoslayingvampires #gradyhendrix #modernvampire #gothicfiction #moderngothic

6 July 2024

Screamin' Mamas just released their Summer 2024 Edition, including my flash CNF piece, "Airplane: Unaccompanied Minor." The short piece is my retelling of being seated next to an unaccompanied minor on a flight last Thanksgiving and how that moment was informed by my own solo air travel as a child.

Visit screaminmamas.com to purchase your copy today!

#screaminmamas #creativenonfiction #creativenonfictionwriters #flashcnf #authorsofinsta #writersofinsta #igwriter

30 June 2024

Sex Without Poetry: on Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus

Delta of Venus is a compilation of erotic short stories Anaïs Nin contributed to a collection commissioned by an anonymous American businessman (whose identity was much later revealed). The businessman wanted, essentially, to read pornography and in the preface to Delta of Venus, Nin’s diary entries inform us that the man wanted sex “without poetry,” a request which Nin found preposterous and disdainful, for she believed that sex must be inspired by what is sensual, emotional, romantic, and yes, poetic. Nin believed the two were inextricable, or, if they were separated, they lost value. This is, perhaps, the glory of Nin’s erotic writing: it is the first of its kind, a feminist perspective on sex, even (and perhaps especially) sex outside of marriage. While she may have attempted to strip the text of poetry, still it contains threads of sensuality and illustrates the depth and breadth of women’s sexual pleasure—without the prudish moralizations of her time.

What frustrated me at first but was perhaps intentional to suit the writing’s purpose (as prefaced in Nin’s diary entries), was that the majority of Nin’s characters in these stories were flat and superficial. They were provided only very brief background development. They seemed all to want the same thing: love, sex. But then, the closer I paid attention, the more I recognized Nin aligning her characters’ sexual desires with the histories of their sexual awakenings in youth. Sometimes these awakenings were quite normal, and other times they were trauma-informed with startling insight. Whatever the story of a character’s awakening, this often recommended a particular sexual fetish: voyeurism, worship, violence, exhibitionism, incest, bestiality, etc. Not every character wanted simply love, sex; they wanted, based on their history, a particular flavor of sexuality. There’s something so baldly human in Nin’s unflinching portrayal of human sexuality, what actually happens in the very real world that nobody talks about. Insightful for the 1940s.

Full review at megvlaun dot com

#bookrecommendations #bookreview #deltaofvenus #anaisnin #anaïsnin

24 June 2024

Dederer's Monsters

Hidden deep in the center of the book is a chapter about motherhood and monstrosity—a chapter that I adored because Dederer aligns it with her calling (my calling) as a writer. Dederer claims that the way women become monsters is by abandoning our children. I felt that. But then she tries to qualify abandonment, and things get a little hairy. Where do we draw the line when it comes to maternal abandonment? If I choose to be a stay-at-home mom and relinquish writing altogether, for my children, but am so unhappy that I become alcoholic, is that not still abandonment? Honestly, this section validated the time I spent reading the rest of the book. It was honest, true, hard, and real. Dederer speaks to me when she writes,

Art is often seen as voluntary, an item on a list of choices you’re making, a task that can be prioritized or dispensed with, depending on available resources at the time. An item to be balanced against the exigencies of family. But. If you are an artist and you always, always put your children’s needs first, eventually your own need will make itself heard and you will wonder, What would I have made in those lost years? You will wonder, Am I too late? (191)

But then, considering my decision to mother first, I rail at her, when she follows with this:

And you might be. Too late. You might have needed those years, when your kids were small. Just the way other works—lawyers, professors—also need those years if they are to have a career. And the way sill other workers need those years if they are to make a living. (192)
God, that made me so mad—so furious! I nearly threw my book. I hated Dederer for saying the thing that I know to be true because I’ve experienced it. I close my eyes and shake my head: it must still be worthwhile to try, right?

Read full review at megvlaun dot com

#bookrecommendations #bookreviewer #clairedederermonsters #picasso #hemingway #plath #virginiawoolf #anaïsnin #woodyallen #art #artist #writer

In terms of craft, there is a bit of fun insofar as the reporter/biographer Monique Grant chapters are written in Grant’s first-person voice in present tense, while Evelyn Hugo’s retelling of her life is written in Hugo’s first-person voice in the past tense, and then there are snippets from tabloids peppered throughout (in present tense but with historical date stamps). The chapters are short, which kept the plot moving swiftly. And I must admit, I was in awe at the way Jenkins could so easily capture scenes critical to the advancement of the plot in such brief chapters. There is a good lesson in this.

What is most remarkable to me is Jenkins Reid’s seemingly unlimited capacity to world build within our world. None of these characters, not a single one, is a real-life character. She could so easily have tossed in a Hepburn or Grant or Peck, but she didn’t. They were each entirely unique characters built specifically to advance the plot. The same can be said of the tabloids. This is a sort of faux-Hollywood, a not-so-horrifying Upside Down. In some ways, what Jenkins Reid has done here in creating an entirely fictional Hollywood is similar to what fantasy and sci-fi authors do, creating entire new worlds—with the exception that Jenkins Reid kept the rules and geography of our universe in place. I was impressed. It’s beyond what my brain seems capable of accomplishing.

Read full review at megvlaun dot com

#bookrecommendations #bookreviewer #evelynhugo #taylorjenkinsreid #taylorjenkinsreidbooks #bookworm #pageturner

#hummingbird #hummingbirds #hummer #birdnerd

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is Alexie’s semiautobiographical novel detailing his own escape from Spokane Indian Reservation during his High School years and the years that followed. It is entertaining and inspiring, and it proves just how very far audacity and a touch of arrogance can carry someone. Alexie overcame a childhood of abject poverty with five siblings and two alcoholic parents to become the acclaimed author he is today. And his message in the book, for anyone who reads it, is that your destiny is not dictated by your family history or your current situation. There is so much hope (and laughter) to be found in this story. Like Superman and Me, it was a delight to read and restored some of my faith in humanity.

Read full review: megvlaun.com

#bookreview #shermanalexie #bookrecommendation #booknerd #nativeamericanauthors #easyread

Oh, to Be a Canary!

Wharton tackles throughout this novel the inspection (and debunking) of the sane/insane binary. What is sanity? Wharton begins to address this as Birdy inserts himself into his own dreams as a bird. The more often Birdy appears as a bird in his dreams, the less and less his waking life feels “real.” He begins to wonder which life is waking and which is the dream state. Rightly so.

This theme evolves beyond dreams over the course of the book, however, as Birdy is stuck behind bars in a psych ward, acting entirely like a bird, and Al is trying to get Birdy to “come back” and be normal so that he can be released. But which is crazier, the reader is given to consider: pretending to be a bird or living/trudging through real life? Birdy says, “I’ll tell you, Al, I’ve been thinking. Maybe crazy people are the ones who see things clear but work out a way to live with it” (300). He continues…

“Listen, Al. I think what I’m trying to say is, we really are loons. We’re crazy because we can’t accept the idea that things happen for no reason at all and that it doesn’t mean anything. We can’t see life as just a row of hurdles we have to get over somehow. It looks to me as if everybody who isn’t crazy just keeps hacking away to get through. They live it out day by day because each day is there and then when they run out of days they close their eyes and call themselves dead” (301).

Some days, I admit, I wish I were normal. Sane. Either able to achieve non-attachment to life, like Perta, or at least keep “hacking to get through” without this crushing weight settled upon my chest. But like Al says, “I’m stuck. I can’t seem to make myself different and I can never go back to fooling myself the old ways” (300). There is no going back. There is only this, and I can only hope to find the best ways to make life joy-filled and fun, while it lasts.

Read full review at megvlaun.com

#bookreviews #williamwharton #birdy #bookrec #booknerd #bookreview #autismacceptance #sanity #createsomethingnew

9 June 2024

A few simple, silly haikus.

Just needed to create SOMETHING.

These are the product of a few successive days of turmoil. Enjoy.

~m

#dailyhaiku #dailypoem #dailypoetry #igpoem #haikupoetry #haikutoheal #healingthroughhaiku #poetsofig

2 june 2024

good mourning

#dailypoetry #igpoet #goodmorningquotes #poetsofinsta #dailypoem #poetrychallenge

Close To The Bone Publishing has featured my flash horror story, High Fidelity!

Visit their IG and go to their website to read it today!

close2thebone.co.uk

So exciting! Thanks for the opportunity, @cttb_fiction

#horror #flashfiction #shortstorywriter #africangreyparrot #closetothebonepublishing #highfidelity #horrorfiction #writersofinstagram #writersofig

Man what a week!

Today my copy of Calliope arrived in the mail, the official publication of the Writer’s Special Interest Group of American Mensa, Ltd.

In it you can find my flash fiction piece, The General’s Wife.

So excited!!

Find it on calliopeontheweb.org

#flashfiction #flashfictionfriday #calliope #shortstorywriter #charactersketch #publishedauthor #writersofinsta

Check out my CNF essay, Dandelion, in the 28th edition of Sonoma State’s Zaum Magazine! Get your copy at zaum.sonoma.edu

Thanks for the opportunity, @zaumpress_

Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel* [*Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere]
By Lisa Cron

To get to the point, Cron’s idea is this: each scene of the story must have a “third rail” that indicates why the event matters to the protagonist and what it causes them to realize (about their worldview misapprehension). Cron writes in her intro, “Story is about how the things that happen in the plot affect the protagonist, and how he or she changes internally as a result” (3). She continues, “Anything that doesn’t impact the protagonist’s internal struggle, regardless of how beautifully written or ‘objectively’ dramatic it is, will stop the story cold, breaking the spell that captivated readers, and unceremoniously catapulting them pack into their own lives” (4). So, the protagonist (and yes, she insists there can really only be one alpha protagonist per story) must have some backstory wherein they developed a grave misperception in their worldview that the fresh plot will force them to address head-on. This will ostensibly change them. Cron insists that story cannot exist without this “third rail.”

To begin, I agree almost wholly with Cron. Perhaps because I am so psychologically minded, I cannot ever see any character I write as distinct from his/her backstory and subsequent worldview (and let’s not even dive into how opposite this instruction is from Benjamin Percy’s in Thrill Me, where he instructs that we should incorporate as little backstory as possible). Each of my short stories to date does precisely what Cron instructs above. Now, could those stories accomplish this “third rail” guide better than they currently do? Yes. Cron’s book has given words and theory to a thing I was attempting blind. I love this.

Read full review at megvlaun dot com.

#bookstagrammer #bookstagram #booktok #booktoker #storygenius #bookrecommendation #craftbook #craftbooks

Well let’s start here: Girl, Interrupted is a memoir by Susanna Kaysen detailing her two-year experience in a psych ward (McLean Hospital) from ages 18 to 20. Kaysen was admitted 27 April 1967 after ingesting a full bottle of aspirin and then meandering off to the market and nearly passing out over the raw meats in a butcher shop. McLean is the same hospital into which Sylvia Plath was admitted in 1953 after ingesting a full bottle of sleeping pills and crawling under her front porch, hoping to die.

Kaysen’s memoir is structured loosely chronologically but often focused on snapshot incidents or particular characters/inmates of the hospital. The chapters rarely span longer than five pages, and the book itself is only about 50,000 words, so short. Very short.

Who do I suspect is the audience, or discourse community, for this memoir? Well, if it were published in the 70s, I’d have suspected the audience would be the general public in a culture that did not want to believe in the prevalence (or profundity) of mental illness. In this, Kaysen does some (fair) finger-pointing at mental illness denial in families of the time, but she didn’t publish until 1993. Ostensibly, the discourse community could have been the same, just further along the road. Perhaps the intent was awareness. Perhaps…like the rest of us writers…the achievement of publication was an end in itself.
Read full review at megvlaun dot com

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18 April 2024

Anticipation of Attainment: Jennifer Egan’s The Keep

Egan’s novel, The Keep, was zany and off-the-wall—and it captured my interest almost immediately.

The literary critic in me would be bereft if I did not address what appears to me the prevalent theme of the novel: anticipation. One thing is achieved in the climax of this story: freedom. Danny climbs from cave-like tunnels to save twenty-something people, including women and children, from entombment. Ray digs his way out of prison. Otherwise, the entire story centers upon anticipation without attainment. Danny wants to be number two, but Mick stands in his way. Danny wants to escape, but there are no trains. Ray wants Holly, but prison and Tom-Tom stand in the way. Mick wants to be with Ann, but Howard stands in the way. In the end, though, it is Holly’s anticipation of attaining Ray at The Keep that draws the story to its conclusion—and Egan knows better than to provide resolution or satisfaction on that front.

This tale is about how we achieve greater satisfaction (dopamine) from the anticipation of attainment than from the attainment of a thing, itself. This is why extramarital affairs happen despite quite happy marriages: the partner is so infinitely and readily available. It’s the thump in the chest when text bubbles appear (and why Danny so coveted his devices). It’s learning in for a first kiss. It’s arriving at the store to shop, seek, find, all before arriving home with spoils that suddenly no longer satiate. It’s why…it’s why…we’re willing to spar the big boss on screen just one more time, one more time. The anticipation is the sublime. Egan’s ending is perfect. Holly cannot have Ray because all is lost in the having. Better her imagination continue to invent ways they should meet…on and on into infinity. This continued foiled attainment is surer to gratify.

Read full review @ megvlaun dot com

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Enright is an Irish author and recipient of many writing prizes—and it’s no wonder. The Wren, The Wren is one of those few magical texts that transports and transfixes and befuddles. I was astounded by the depth of experience and interiority Enright has created for each protagonist that is so vastly divergent from my own comprehension of the universe. That is to say, Enright permitted me to live from inside worldviews and manners of thought that I’ve never to date witnessed in life or in literature. For me, this novelty was simultaneously disarming and intimidating. Enright’s story, language, and characters lulled and seduced as much as they reinforced my own insecurity—my impostor syndrome: I could never, ever, come up with a world and characters so different from anything I’ve ever experienced in the real world—how did she do it?

Then I come back down to earth: Enright is Irish. Her cultural background is nothing like my own. I know that sounds silly and simple; human is human, after all. Our stories are universal. Still, as I currently forge my way through Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses, I’m startled by this living, breathing example of a book whose craft so departs from all that I’ve learned of fiction writing from my white-bred British/American literary background. Enright’s book is character-centric—to the point that plot is a thing only loosely draped upon those character’s shoulders. Given the command, could I possibly point to the standard points on Freytag’s pyramid beyond the one obvious inciting incident of Phil abandoning his wife and children (and his misplacement of his favorite watch)? No! The whole story feels like the ebb and flow of a tide. It is not a river that moves toward the sea; it has no particular direction, and such is life. Such is love. Such is the nature of generational trauma and DNA.

This is a revelation to me: story may be character-centric and nearly devoid of plot. And in Enright’s case, that lends itself to a poetic lyricality that glints from each page like illuminated family jewels.

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J. Robert Lennon appears to be a popular, well-respected author. According to the bio snap on the back cover of this book, he’s been published in The Paris Review, Granta, Harper’s, Playboy, and The New Yorker. He is also a writing instructor at Cornell. Much to aspire to, here. But I don’t get it. At least the New York Times Book Review snippet on the back cover calls it “confusing,” so I’m not alone in that take. It’s the “convincing” part with which I deeply disagree.

It’s clear to me why this book is on my list for the semester: it has an unlikeable protagonist. But unlikeable might be an understatement, here. This man comes off haughty and narcissistic, like a know-it-all who believes himself smarter than he actually is—the perfect example of the R. Buckminster Fuller quote, “The more we learn the more we realize how little we know.” His interchanges with everyone at the start of the novel made my skin crawl: his behavior and word choices are snarky and lofty, and the dialogue is unconvincing. This, along with the fact that our protagonist has zero intimate connections, made the story difficult to read because I simply didn’t care what happened to him.

Those missing intimate connections spoke volumes to the persona’s engagement with and author’s portrayal of women, in particular. Eric had zero compassion or goodwill toward women. What is going on with this author’s representation of women in this book? Is this a reflection of the protagonist’s or the author’s disposition toward women? This made me deeply uncomfortable.

This book’s plot also left me wanting more. In it, Lennon dropped numerous threads to which he never returned. These dropped threads niggled at my brain. The sleight of hand Lennon uses to keep his reader ignorant of Loesch’s history with Stiles—for fully half of the novel—felt absolutely disingenuous. It seems to me that Lennon was attempting to retain some mystery about the protagonist even though it’s written in first-person—and that felt slimy. It was more confusion than mystery.

full review @ megvlaun dot com

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1 April 2024

Courtney Cook is very young—maybe only 28—and was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder early, compared to most, because her symptoms were so pronounced that they inhibited normal functioning. She has an MFA, and it seems this book was her thesis manuscript. Maybe? The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces is a graphic memoir that brings light to her struggles with this disorder.

This book was fantastic for my own writerly needs—an enjoyable, insightful, and well-timed read. It is short, sweet, and the images are engaging. In many instances, these illustrations increased my comprehension of what she was describing in her words, so that was great. Most importantly, it deals with borderline personality disorder from the inside. Cook provides extensive interiority about her experiences/thoughts on the borderline, which is precisely what I am attempting to accomplish with my own novel without ever using the words “borderline personality disorder.” So…there’s just tons of inspiration here.

Additionally, this book was ripe with what Cook believes are symptoms of her disorder. Incidentally, many of these are symptoms I recognize. Obviously, there’s a reason I’m writing this novel: I feel compassionate about BPD because I believe I experience many of its symptoms, myself. While I do not think I have this disorder, I do think I have CPTSD and experience much overlap with BPD. Hence, my goal in bringing awareness about it. That said, I have no interest in writing a memoir about it; it seems to me a better approach—an approach that will garner more broad interest—is to present it as an engaging story: fiction.

Overall, a great read. Super helpful!

#bookrecommendations #bookreview #thewayshefeels #bpd #bpdawareness #borderline #borderlinepersonality #bookstagrammer #booktok

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My name is Meg Vlaun

I am a former military brat turned military spouse turned writer. I hold an MA in English Literature and currently attend Regis University's Mile-High MFA program in Denver, CO. My graduation date is set for July 2025.

My interests are writing creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, book reviews, and more.

Stay tuned for my upcoming novel, Pharmakon!

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