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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).

How science fiction helped me understand my mental disorder. →

My first week at the Clarion Writer’s Workshop, I decided to kick things off with a bang: an 8,000-word short story that never ended.

Clarion is a highly-renowned training ground for sci-fi/fantasy writers, so naturally, I wanted to make an impression. Hence, I introduced myself to my cohort and award-winning instructors by writing a recursive metafictional time travel story. The main “plot” was only about two pages, followed by another thirty pages of footnotes, each with multiple internal references to other footnotes, all to explain the theoretical science behind the causal loop that lead to the main characters’ spacetime-crossed romance. This had the effect of taking the reader on a self-directed non-linear journey through characters’ pasts, presents, and futures, in an endless circle of effect-cause-effect that was unique to each reader.

That was 2013. Me and the other 17 members of my cohort still talk regularly; some of them have already become award-winning authors in their own rights. And to this day, not a week goes by without at least one of them giving me shit for that story. But I have a good excuse for my obnoxious ambitions:

I have ADHD, so it made perfect sense. To me.

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Big News! #Clarion2013

I just returned from the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska, which was an absolutely incredible time filled with lots of new friends (hi everyone!). While I was there, pondering how so many people could afford to be alcoholics in such a remote and expensive small town, I learned three important things: (1) how it feels to be Al Pacino in Insomnia; (2) what I think is the final missing piece of my play True Believers; and (3) that I just got accepted into the Clarion Writing Workshop Class of 2013! Clarion is pretty much the premiere training grounds for short fiction writers in the realms of science fiction / fantasy / horror. I'll be spending 6 weeks in San Diego along with 17 other writers, studying under such notable names as Cory Doctorow (woohoo!) and pumping out and workshopping a new short story every week. And somehow, my job is actually letting me get away with this (although the timing is fortunate in that we don't actually have any shows running in the summer). Clarion is a hugely respected program, and I couldn't be more excited or proud to have been accepted, and so far, everyone else in the program has been incredibly welcoming (at least through our minor e-introductions, anyway).

Granted, it's kind of crazy and stressful to deal with news like that when you're already 4 hours behind the people in Boston that you need to talk to about it and you're also supposed to be adhering to a somewhat-rigid schedule of play readings that conflict with everything on the East Coast, but I was able to make it work (seriously the Clarion phone call literally came in the middle of the workshop reading for True Believers) (don't worry, I silenced my cell phone ahead of time) (yes, there is cell reception in Valdez).

So basically if anyone wants to hang out in San Diego in July, I'm yours! I'm going to be sad leaving Boston at such a beautiful time (and especially leaving Bevin behind), but it's a pretty exciting reason to make such a sacrifice.

Oh, and yes, this does mean that I will be at #SDCC this year. Hollerrrr.