She’s an adult bird, so traumatized by the events she’s been subjected to, she’s plucked her feathers out. Her story isn’t going to end in cosmetic transformation. Her feathers won’t grow back. She will never be ‘normal’ again.

Dolly doesn’t have to become beautiful to make the care worthwhile. We understand the patience and tolerance; the recipient is a bird. It’s not something we typically give ourselves or each other, even though the metaphor is right there, staring us down. Whether we see the pillaging of our natural world to take captives, or that shaking raw self inside us all— our mysteriously boundless capacity for love—Dolly is everything. And I can’t stop watching.

It’s nothing like what “content” typically delivers. Our attention here is on the one who was hurt. Nobody is asking Dolly or her caregiver to make this easier for whoever hurt her.

But since I brought it up, what about that fucker?

I want that kind of care for women. I also want consequences for the people who make it necessary. That’s why I don’t write love stories. I write women who get justice.

My new novel, Now Entering the Chat—about a woman hired to cover up a sexual assault scandal at a university—comes from my own experiences at work. I say at work to limit the discussion. It’s not the extent of my assault experiences. And when I say assaulted, I don’t mean the gazillion awkward remarks and outright lewd comments. I’m talking about different workplaces and separate incidents, from hovering behind me at the copier to licking my back at a holiday party to grabbing my ass and squeezing it like a stress ball. My bosses, male and female, agreed: for the good of him, I needed to suck it up.

I’m supposed to work with you after that?

I didn’t persist. I quit. Twice.

So now I write new endings. After years of trying to change hearts and minds through journalism, I’ve found that stories are a more effective, sneakier tool. I’m done being fed up. I refuse to give my one wild and precious life to political morons. I want to read and write books that surprise and delight without dumbing down the message. I did the same thing in my Queenpin Chronicles (women flipping mafia machismo on its head) as in my new Steel City Suspense series (1990s Pittsburgh, a woman running a spin machine in a city shrugging off its rust belt image).

Preorder Now Entering the Chat (out November 19) as a signed limited edition, in paperback or ebook. Signed copies are available only through preorder, exclusively at my shop.

PREORDER NOW ENTERING THE CHAT

I’m also voting, and I hope you will too. And day-to-day, remember your inner Dolly, whether she’s this bird or the late, great Parton. The time for accountability is now.

It’s ripped from my experience.

And every time I stop to write a post about what’s happening — whether it’s the Cornell 7 or Shane Gillis or whatever the fuck just happened in the White House press office where yet another woman is blithely lying to the public to defend a criminal — something else happens. So I did a quick video.

A little background on how we got to the Cornell Seven, a little rage, then a link to the video evidence.

In the fall of 1990, a male student was accused of raping two women at Antioch College. He was never prosecuted, or even investigated by law enforcement or Antioch officials. Sound familiar?

Title IX law requires institutions receiving federal funds must create equal opportunities for their students. That includes creating safe environments. The law mandates prompt internal investigation of assault, whether police are involved or not.

The failure in 1990 occurred because the federal government had no explicit, standardized legal framework defining consent, and the bar for criminal prosecution in the state of Ohio was even greater. The burden of proof favored the assailant.

Antioch didn’t even make the male student leave the dorm where they all lived and the attacks occurred. They told the women they could relocate.

The outrage turned into action when, that fall, students gathered to draft what would become the Sexual Offense Prevention Policy. The college adopted it in 1991, pioneering affirmative verbal consent at every stage.

Many people cite this policy as the reason Antioch College ultimately closed.

Debatable. But that’s for someone else’s ‘Stack. What’s clear is that by 1993, the situation at Antioch was a national punchline, both on SNL and in national news outlets. Don’t miss the videos below!

Humor often ages poorly. Especially when it’s punching down. How were we doing in the zeitgeist?

Enter Katie Roiphe, who famously told us in 1993, “one person’s rape may be another’s bad night.”

Her NYT Magazine article and subsequent book sparked a global conversation about “rape-crisis feminism,” especially interesting considering that on this very day, October 2, the New York Times has bumped Dear Leader for a cover story about the Cornell Seven, a phenomenon I would argue they helped create.

Roiphe has doubled down in more recent years but I’m not going to give her more air here — you can read more in Jezebel and The Rumpus — what matters is this: her evidence for debunking rape statistics was anecdotal.

This how eager we are to dismiss women’s lived experiences.

Let’s not forget Emma Sulkowicz carrying a mattress at graduation in 2015, summed up beautifully by . Her case came to light more than a decade ago, and still we got the Cornell Seven.

Public response to the Cornell 7 has been different.

From the I Am Jane Doe videos to the explainers to the sarcasm —

I’m thrilled by the backlash. And still furious at the level of pressure it takes to spur national outrage.

(If you want a deeper dive on what the Cornell Seven is, check out ’s fantastic post, which comes a bonus gift link to her Slate article.)

Similar situations, four decades between them and the laws still favor the men.

If you’re like me, you might have a photo with your college besties at 1989’s March for Women’s Equality and Women’s Lives (if I find mine I’ll add it later). You may even feel like we’re fighting the same battles.

But here’s something to remember, also. The sheer scale of that march heavily influenced the 1992 federal elections. We have that opportunity again.

Moreover, there’s a huge difference in today’s backlash — donors are pulling support!

A petition circulating among alumni has gathered nearly 50,000 signatures with participants pledging to freeze donations until university leadership addresses the situation.

I think about that a lot when I write: who gets hurt, and who gets to carry on as though nothing happened. Watching Brett Kavanaugh bro his way onto the Supreme Court propelled me to write my first novel, Florida Girls. Has anyone ever said that about the book? No. I want to write entertaining stories that sneak up on you. Sure, that’s code for suspense/mystery, it’s also a nod to my personal mission to write from a very particular point of view and make you feel the injustice before something else kicks in to explain it away. Something like, boys will be boys.

My forthcoming Now Entering the Chat is about a sexual assault on a college campus. Her report gets the kind of attention one would expect in the ‘90s, but what I like to do in my books is get justice for people who have been wronged. This mess has inspired me to write a new ending for the book. So I better get back to that stat.

In the meantime, I don’t want another generation looking at their protest photographs and wondering how they’re still fighting the same battles. A woman who reports sexual assault should be able to expect a competent investigation even if she never files a civil lawsuit, appears in a headline, or persuades thousands of strangers to pay attention. Her report needs the same care when the public is looking elsewhere.

BONUS: Here’s the disbelief of a national news outlet covering the Antioch consent policy AND that SNL skit (looks like NBC took it down).

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I want to preface this post by saying I’m at the doctor’s office waiting for a blood draw that required fasting. So buckle up, this could get weird.

Back to my post!

It could be my particular feeds, but it seemed like Ride or Die got a fair amount of attention, particularly on social media. So this news was a surprise.

Also, I’m not surprised. Hear me out.

There was a lot to like, beginning with the chemistry between Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer. Their banter was terrific, but they had the kind of chemistry you can’t manufacture with clever dialogue and plot twists. I liked spending time with them and rooted for both of them.

That was part of the problem.

The show seemed determined to make both women stars in exactly the same way. Both were smart. Both could work a puzzle. Both could decipher clues. Both could take control of a situation. Waddingham’s character was more physically capable, which made sense given her assassin/spy background, but even there, the show kept finding ways to put Spencer into action sequences and physical situations rather than allowing that difference to become an escapade in itself. As the season wore on, they felt less complementary than interchangeable. Didn’t feel true to the “buddy film” trope.

So I wondered, if these had been two male characters, would anyone have worried about letting one of them be the brains and the other the muscle?

Probably not. Think: Rush Hour, Sherlock Holmes, even Men in Black.

I’ve spent a long time at the keyboard carping about women as the nagging wife, the humorless one, the helpless damsel waiting for the male hero to fix everything. But Ride or Die overcorrects, sanding down these women until they are equally brilliant, equally capable, equally brave, and equally useful in every possible circumstance.

That’s not equality, it’s redundancy. Nothing will sap viewer curiosity faster. Watchable partnerships depend on contrast. One character charges ahead while the other sees the trap. One understands people; the other understands systems. One lies beautifully; the other couldn’t bluff her way through a game of Go Fish.

Ride or Die had conflict, but even that suffered from sameness. Waddingham lied about being a spy. Spencer was I’m-not-speaking-to-you-ever-again mad. But if they really had been close, there would have been clues — especially for a puzzle solver — that Waddingham was lying. That kind of conflict could have evolved. Instead we got backstory about Spencer’s yawner of a marriage and the ghost haunting Waddingham’s present. In other words, unrelated material but for one scene. (Please, if I’m forgetting some, comment below. Low blood sugar is real!)

Even the promo still I used for this piece reminds me of the problem. In the first episode, Spencer is made out to be a crap driver. Maybe her poor judgment made her a good crisis driver?? If that was a twist, it’s not a great one.

An example where contrast was done well comes from Bridesmaids. Annie (Kristen Wiig) is insecure, funny, self-sabotaging, broke, and deeply attached to Lillian (Maya Rudolph). Helen (Rose Byrne) is polished, wealthy, socially strategic, and threatening precisely because she’s good at the things Annie feels she’s failing at. Megan (Melissa McCarthy) is fearless and bizarrely confident. Rita is cynical and exhausted. Becca is painfully earnest. None of them needs to be made equally competent, equally likable, or equally admirable.

That’s why Bridesmaids lives on as a classic example of women (Wiig and Annie Mumolo) writing women. That scene where Kristen Wiig is trying to get the approval of the teenage girl in the jewelry store? SO good. All the relationships have energy. The women are allowed to be annoying, jealous, and behave badly, yet still matter to each other. It makes them memorable, and that makes them matter to the viewer.

Those are the relationships I want to stay with, where affection and irritation occupy the same space. Where the person you would cross the world for is also the person most capable of making you want to leave them at a gas station.

Waddingham and Spencer were so enjoyable together — the ingredients were sitting right there. Let Waddingham be frighteningly competent at this, but hopeless at that. Let Spencer solve problems Waddingham can’t. Lean into their failings.

If writing strong women means removing the qualities that create dependence, imbalance and conflict, we are merely continuing the Supermom story — now in menopause! — under the guise of empowered storytelling. It’s not that I want female characters made weaker, I want them to be allowed to fuck up and come back from it. Especially thanks to their girlfriends. Feels real to me.

I’ve leaned into that dynamic hard in the book I’m currently finishing, Now Entering the Chat. Jessica Greer and Sofia Reyes love each other, rely on each other, and are absolutely not good at the same things. Jessica has the killer instinct Sofia sometimes lacks. Sofia sees the human cost Jessica analyzes right past. This time, that difference may blow up their friendship at exactly the moment Jessica needs Sofia most.

Now Entering the Chat is available for preorder now. If you like women who are allowed to be brilliant, wrong, loyal, furious, and occasionally terrible, I think you’ll like this one.

PREORDER HERE

What are your favorite examples of strong female characters?

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We have all seen the uptick in bigotry and racism, so this bizarre messaging I’m getting shouldn’t surprise me so much. But it does.

First, there was this NetGalley reviewer, who thought I should’ve included a trigger warning for having the audacity to put out a book featuring an LGBTQIA+ character. Specifically, and she wrote this down, because it was an “affirming“ representation.

The book isn’t about LGBTQIA+ issues, so I found this perplexing. then again…

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Not because it wasn’t working. It was a POV casualty.

I’m a big fan of multi-POV novels. I fell in love with this narrative device after seeing the Oscar-nominated film Ajami, which showed life in Jafa from Israeli and Palestinian POVs. Using different vantage points let you show the same event from angles that can contradict each other, refracting the truth.

(Side note: Haven’t seen it since it came out in 2009, it would be interesting to re-watch now; it was co-directed by my then-colleague Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani.)

It’s a device that must be used with caution, however, because multiple POVs have the worst possible side effect of losing the reader. The reader can marvel at the contradictions, but the minute they think, wait, who’s talking now? Or worse, what is this character talking about? Well, the story has died a little death. And not the good murder myster…

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When I started on Substack in… I’m sure there’s a way to figure out the year but the point of this is time suck. I love Substack—it’s a bit like old Twitter but with (a little) more algorithm tweaking capability.

Anyway, I started this newsletter writing essays. Rants, mostly. About the Supreme Court, AI bias, the whole tradwife industrial complex. You know the drill — you subscribed.

Then I started writing fiction. I haven’t changed my mind on what I care about, I’ve just moved my opinions to my books. Florida Girls was written in response to Brett Kavanaugh bro-ing his way onto the Supreme Court. What says let’s battle the patriarchy better than WW2-era women, an eighteen-year-old paired with a thirty-eight-year old — each with strongly-held but wildly different convictions — pitted against the mafia, the most patriarchal institution known to Western culture?

My forthcoming book? The Critic?

It’s set in 1995 Pittsburgh, where Jessica Greer is falsely…

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The Critic, Book 1 of the Three Rivers Mysteries, launches June 18. And I’m inviting you to join my street team.

It's 1995, Pittsburgh. Jessica Greer just lost her theater column to a rival — and that rival has been rushed to the hospital with ricin poisoning. Before she can process either fact, the FBI is at her door. The motive is textbook. The circumstantial evidence is damning. And the city has already decided she's guilty. She’s sure didn't do it. Mostly.

Here’s what accepted applicants get:

• Free e-ARCs — early access before anyone else

• Physical ARC giveaways

• PR box drop opportunities

Here’s what I’m asking: Read the book. Share it. Post a review, a photo, a TikTok, a Note — whatever platform feels like home to you. No follower minimum. Just genuine enthusia…

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Six books = two memoirs, a trilogy of historical noir, and now The Critic, the first book in my Steel City Mystery series. Here’s the weird/best part — the process for this one was genuinely a dream. Maybe I finally learned something?

Here’s what changed.

Same instinct, sharper execution

With the Queenpin Chronicles, I did my research. I knew the genre, I studied the market, I came in with a brief. I also came in with a very clear “what not to do” list — no buxom women with tiny-waists sporting bikinis, no Downton Abbey-adjacent pastels, nothing that looked like a “cozy” beach read, because cozy is a very specific audience.

Yup, all of that plus covers I liked. Still got back covers I would never use.

I think the instincts were right — and the end result still makes me happy — but the execution had gaps.

For The Critic, I went back to the research phase — but did it differently. Beyond studying covers in the abstract, I asked other auth…

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The book is set in ‘90s, a time when I worked for a large PR firm. I hated being a corporate shill, but I needed the subsidized healthcare. That’s when I first became aware of “spin” in the same way we were all becoming aware of “cell phones” and “the internet.” Spin had been around since long before then (Google Nixon’s Checkers speech), but it was often defeated (See, Watergate). I suppose my little act of subversion was writing for alternative newsweeklies on the side.

Back to 2024. This was right after “they’re eating the dogs.” We were watching extreme manipulation of stereotypes working in real time, but were in a place of optimism. The zeitgeist had a bit of a ‘90s feel, lots of gender-bending, a smart, young, articulate …

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After that, I couldn’t stop watching.

So there I was, eight seasons back, watching a reunion episode. One of the year’s big dramas was the fallout between two couples: Shania and Kyle and Natalie and Shayne. When Shania’s scheme to drive a wedge between Natalie and Shayne was brought up, she looked straight into the camera, serene as a saint. Let her lies become the weather. Watching that Botox-heavy face not react felt eerily familiar.

Nobody blinked. Said, wait, that’s not what happened. They just moved on.

Can you see the Pam Bondi-Karoline Leavitt-Kristi Noem of it?

Shania’s ability to hold her story while the receipts were on the table? That’s not delusion. That’…

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I want to preface this idea by saying any list I can come up with will be incomplete. That said, I’d hate to let that to keep me from trying. Please, add places/people/stacks from your list. My list mushroomed beyond WaPo already.

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There are also plenty of journalists not on this platform, like Kara Swisher, who is on Substack but really only active on her podcasts. This list isn’t the last word but more of a starting point to be sure democracy doesn’t actually die.

Yada yada, I had to start somewhere.

Legacy media renegades:

• , founder of The Contrarian, “not owned by anybody,” a direct swipe at Bezos after leaving WaPo in Jan, features reported opinion and cultural commentary “without phony balance”

• , founder of User Mag, tech/internet culture

• , Political journalism

• , Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist

Noteworthy:

• is the OG with Letters from an American, offering contextual insight on current political events

• , Abortion, Every Day

• , family insider, anti-Trump analysis

• , aka @iampoliticsg…

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Buckle up, because bad as this is, it’s not the worst part.

A female reporter asked the President about the documents detailing decades of sexual abuse and trafficking of vulnerable women by powerful men—abuse that continued even after Epstein’s conviction—and his response was to police her facial expressions.

“Why don’t you ever smile?” Trump asked. “You never smile when you ask a question. You should smile more.”

We know you’re not listening to what we say, Don. But WOW. That’s not tone deaf, that’s a battle cry.

And yet, this is where it gets more stomach-turning: J.D. Vance went on Megyn Kelly’s show to defend Trump’s comment, dismissing the criticism with that tired old refrain about how ladies should “lighten up already.” And Kelly—whose career-defining moment came when she accused her former boss Roger Ailes of sexual harassment—sat there nodding …

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Below the letter are contact links for Florida’s reps and all 28 districts for the sake of convenience. Google will yield yours, just as it did mine.

This letter is pushy. It’s not a request, it’s a demand. Even so, it’s tempered. It does not express the full fury, rage & utter despair I feel. I write killing not murder. I do not ask how much of the slush fund has gone to Kristi Noem cosplay, the $200 million ad budget awarded without competitive bidding to bffs in her inner circle, nor do I lament the destruction of the largest designated wilderness in the eastern U.S., the Eve…

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This archive is dense - over 150 posts on everything from 1940s crime queens to modern publishing strategy. Rather than make you dig through it all, here’s your roadmap to the best stuff, organized by what you’re actually looking for.

Bookmark this post. I’ll update it as new content gets added and I have time to dig into the archives!

1. INDIE PUBLISHING & AUTHOR PLATFORM

• , the unfiltered truth about DIY publishing, my weekly podcast with

• Audiobook Production guide

• Book pricing

• Writer to narrator DIY

• Rights management

• New tools & insights

2. ILL-BEHAVED WOMEN

• First Lady of the Tropicana (Ofelia Fox)

• Sophie Tucker: Last of the Red Hot Mamas

• Forgotten Inventions (Hedy Lamarr)

• The Secrets of Great Storytelling

• What Great Great Grandma Was Really Drinking

3. CULTURAL COMMENTARY (feminist lens on current events)

• Harrison Butker/Joy Behar

• Algorithm Has D…

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No affiliate spam. No “I heard this might be good.” These are the tools in my regular rotation, from the audiobook production service that saved me thousands to the marketing guide that finally made BookBub ads make sense.

Whether you’re writing your first book or your seventh (like me right now!), you’re probably drowning in options. You need to know what’s worth the money. This is the shortcut I wish I’d had.

Subscribers only. Updated as I find new gems.

Resource library

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And yet… I’m querying agents for my the series I’m currently working on.

Right now.

You may be squinting at your screen right now, thinking something along the lines of, Pick a lane, Kirchner. Are you basically saying what’s good for me is different from what’s good for you?

Fair. Let me explain.

The Confession Part

I’ve had agents before. I know how this works. The waiting, the form rejections, the occasional “this is great but I don’t know how to sell it” personalized pass that can sting worse.

So why am I doing this again? Marketing feedback.

Agents know books and book marketing. They know what’s selling, what editors are buying, how to position a story. And I’m writing in a new (to me) genre—my new book is a psychological thriller set in…

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From Babysitting to Changing Lives

After finishing high school, Maggie Doyne took a gap year and ended up in Nepal during the country’s civil conflict. She met a six-year-old girl named Hima who was breaking stones in a riverbed for pennies.

Doyne helped Hima go to school, paying for her tuition, uniform, and books. Soon she expanded her efforts to help more children, and when the year was up and the other students went home, Doyne called her parents to ask them to send the $5,000 she’d saved from babysitting.

With that money (and donations from people around the world), she bought land in the Surkhet valley and started building. Twenty year…

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But this week managed to outdo itself.

After the “piggy” comment, his press secretary jumped in with a straight face to call his bullying insult “honest and open.”

Honest and open.

Somewhere, the goalposts are screaming for help.

We’re watching ICE openly profile people, while the Coast Guard rebrands long-recognized symbols of hate as “just symbols.” Now bullying is reframed as authenticity. Just as his own transpo secretary asks for civility at the airport.

People would tell me this was '“too much” if I put in in a book.

But mostly, I’m disgusted by the press secretary. There’s a special place in hell for the women who defend this man. But giving subjective name-calling a PR glow-up? That’s a new low.

What’s even more surreal is that this wasn’t the most disturbing thing he said this week. Not even close.

Dear Leader has now publicly called for the execution of Democrats—directly following a video from former military and CIA members advising currently serving military and CIA that they are legally required to refuse unlawful orders.

Can’t wait to see her reply on this one, perhaps execution will be reskinned as “brave leadership.”

We keep redefining cruelty as honesty, and authoritarianism as strength. I can’t pretend this is normal. I can’t let it slide. I hope you don’t either.