You’ve found Will Remains

I was raised in the redneck sticks of central Maryland, halfway between a 1/4 mile dirt track speedway and an institution for the criminally insane, where summer nights were bookended by the post-twilight crash and roar of stock car races and the pre-dawn wail of the prison’s escapee alarm. I can’t hear the prison alarm anymore, but I still wake up most nights at 3, wondering about the bad thing out there.

I blog here and on Substack, where I reflect on writing craft, author authenticity in a hyper-curated age, and the messy brilliance of creation. When the time comes, I’ll blog about what I publish. Follow me at either place to see where my journey takes me next. I promise to share what I learn.

You can also find me on Facebook and Blue Sky, and subscribe to my monthly newsletter at Beehiiv. I welcome anyone exploring and expressing creativity with honesty, integrity, and enthusiasm.

Writing is better with a community. Let’s do it together.

What I’ve done

I spent two decades in the corporate world as a writer, editor, and content developer, specializing in news for federal government employees and the people who do business with them. During that time, I produced daily newsletter content, including thousands of articles, wrote dozens of long-form white papers, and launched or overhauled multiple daily new publications. I produced numerous webinars and in-person events, and created two podcast series, wearing every hat from topic selection to guest wrangling, to writing and presenting, and post-production, marketing, and distribution.

Over the years, I learned how juggle competing projects and meet cascading deadlines. I’m creative, disciplined, reader-focused, and have a good ear for the need-to-know information in any content.

Somewhere in the middle of that, I also created and ran my own small press, specializing in SF&F, horror, mystery, and romance short fiction and poetry. For eight years, Big Pulp was a powerful little engine for writers who love genre but think outside the lines. I published writers whose worked had appeared the New Yorker and some who had never been paid for their work, and a few who experienced their first-ever publication in those pages. Years later, I have spotted those same early-career writers in higher-end places like Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and recognized their names gracing novels at the bookstore (and I buy all of them). I’m so happy they stopped by my DIY press on their way to bigger things.

As EIC, I read a few thousand stories and published a few hundred. As you’d expect, I read a lot of work that wasn’t right for me, but also a lot that was very good, and mixed in with the slush I would occasionally find a story of such quality it deserved to be seen in a publication that paid way better than I could afford. Naturally, I did not tell this to the writer, but graciously accepted their work with thinly disguised glee.

You can learn a lot in the slush pile. I recommend it. Those thousands of pieces sharpened my ear for honest, imaginative writing, and helped me develop a good eye for why a story isn’t working and when it goes off-track. I work hard to put that into practice in my own writing. I still make mistakes, but I’m better at avoiding the obvious ones.

Where I’m going

I’m away from the daily news grind and while I’ll never get over the publishing bug, I’ve set it aside for now so that I can focus on my own fiction.

My work spans literary fiction, crime, spec fic, and autobio. Essentially, I wander where I please, which goes against nearly every piece of advice I’ve read on author branding and writing careers. I’m a contrarian at heart.

But there also is the core theme that ties it all together: what does it mean to be fully yourself in a world that wants you to be something else? I write characters who don’t belong, who lean into darkness but maintain their dignity with stubborn ferocity. They come from life’s crevices: the hopeful misfits, the nearly‑good, the ones forever cracked by circumstance, the people who long for something they can’t quite name. Dropped into life without the owner’s manual, disillusioned but not defeated, they live by their own private moral codes, as they grapple for meaning and connection in a world that keeps them at arm’s length.

My writing has a few elements of existentialism – explorations of identity and disillusionment, characters shaped by alienation – but without the navel-gazing. It overlaps with humanism – examining deeply human themes, complex emotions, difficult truths – but isn’t gentle or optimistic. And there’s a good bit of noir – cynicism, dark humor, and failed communities.

There’s not an easy word for it. It’s just me.

Will Remains.