Brent's Brain

So I’ve been struggling my way through A Dance with Dragons, the latest 1000-page book in George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series (the basis for the HBO series A Game of Thrones). Why am I still reading it if it’s a struggle? Because I find this latest book, like the last [...]

My 2004 novel is called The Last Chance Texaco. Amber, a reader, recently sent in this picture of a gas station in Hillville, Kentucky, where things are maybe just a little off!

With the debut of the new HBO series Girls, I’m hearing a lot of talk about how Lena Dunham is supposedly the “voice” of her gender or her generation (she even jokes about it ironically in the series). It’s funny: I’ve been hearing this all my life, how this writer or that is the “voice” [...]

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: young adult literature predicts the future. No, I don’t mean the FUTURE-future, like the actual events in The Hunger Games. Maybe we really will end up with a totalitarian government that stupefies its populace by forcing its teenagers to participate in games of senseless, exploitative violence. But [...]

Here’s a reprint of an article that I wrote back in 2009 that I still totally agree with! When I was a kid, the country went through a full-fledged Dungeons & Dragons hysteria, where the fantasy role-playing game was accused of everything from turning kids onto Satanism to encouraging them to kill themselves. Decades later, [...]

If you’ve been reading my website or my blog at all, you know that I’ve long held that a successful book isn’t one that is well-written or has engaging characters or is well-plotted or has a fresh, original concept. A great book has all four of those things. Writing, character, plot, and concept are all [...]

Okay, so today, for the first time ever, I found myself feeling a tinge of jealousy regarding YA superstar John Green. It’s not that his latest book, The Fault in Our Stars, has been number one on the New York Times Bestseller list for — what? — six weeks now? It’s that he has yet [...]

A few months ago I posted about how I had independently e-published four older titles of mine that had been traditionally published years ago, but were currently out-of-print or about to go out of print: The Last Chance Texaco, Grand & Humble, and the two sequels to Geography Club, The Order of the Poison Oak [...]

I’m rarely disappointed in a book by Ken Oppel, but his latest, This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein, may be my favorite yet. Yes, it’s the story of a teenage Victor Frankenstein, and normally I’m not a fan of these “before they were famous” retellings of classic figures from myth or literature (for [...]

Ask the Brain is a column where readers can ask me advice about love, life, writing, and, well, just about anything. My massive, all-powerful brain will deign to grant an answer. Either that, or I’ll just make some s**t up. Speaking of which, do you have a question for the brain? Ask it here! (Be [...]