Improbable Press Blog

Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote, scored, and starred in 'Hamilton' on Broadway. "I find that, for me, the work is a safe place to put all the stuff you don't want to put in your real life. I don't want to be a crazy, manic asshole. I don't want to have an affair. I don't want to have a fucking gunfight. But!   "There's a part of your brain that wants to experience everything, and so work's a safe place to explore it all. Both in the writing and in the performing.   "I get to write about an affair. I get...

Ray Bradbury wrote more magically than I ever will. Benedict Cumberbatch and Domhnall Gleeson have achieved more in their young years than I can hope to emulate. At my most muscular my thighs were chubbier than women I thought looked absolutely right. There. That's my starter pack of comparisons that bring me absolutely no damned joy whatsoever. I can go on. I have. I probably will in future. The problem with my list, your list, everyone's list about how they fail in comparison to someone else is that usually the comparisons don't make us better, they rob us of our...

We all know that 'where do writers get their ideas' isn't a real question. All of us who write know the real one is this: How do we make them stop? Most of us have plot bunnies under our bed, fic ear worms burrowing into our brains, and…and ode whales demanding 50K epics. So the real question for most of us is how do we stop the idea inundation long enough to focus on just one? Because the curse of abundance is real. Given too much choice, choice becomes hard for humans to make. It's why we'll stand in front...

I didn’t want to write under a pseudonym. Before I began writing Sherlock stories, I’d published in magazines and anthologies a dozen porn stories under my actual name. So, when I was set to publish my first Sherlock fic I was just going to continue being Wendy C Fries. Oh sweet summer child. This was in 2010, the halcyon days of a fandom mere months old, and back then everyone seemed sure the BBC was going to sue all Sherlock fic writers into pencils and paper poverty. So I grumpily boarded the panic bandwagon and picked an alias. I wanted...

It took a long time to get the most recent issue of Spark out. I asked people to share their kinks via anon, Twitter, to my personal email, by carrier pigeon if necessary. Yet, unlike other Spark issues, a surprising number contacted me personally not with articles, but to say: 'I can't write about kinks for the newsletter. I feel ashamed.' These weren't messages saying 'I'm a teacher and so can't write this sort of stuff,' these were people going on to say they felt that having kinky desires and voicing them was wrong. I just…who made you feel like...