Mark Harbinger | Updates

Goodbye, Dolly (her two lessons) ~~ Counts as Writing #11

Mark Harbinger — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As the well-deserved accolades are pouring in for Dolly Parton, RIP, there is one blind spot I am seeing in the coverage. I just released a collection of fictional stories about strong women, so I have a thought or two.

As a GenX-er, I fondly remember Dolly at the absolute peak of her ~70-year career.

Her talent was undeniable; but she was born a poor girl. So, I found it interesting how she allowed herself to be something of a punch-line in order to get a foothold in a man's world. To be clear: as a kid, you heard about her chest size long before you heard her music. This was deliberate (plastic surgeries, eg). She leaned into and allowed the initial focus to be on her physical beauty: "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap," she joked.

But then, when she would appear on a talk show or get interviewed, whenever any (nearly always male) host would try to lean into that or be crass about it, she'd pivot and steer the conversation into something more productive and wholesome—while always, ALWAYS presenting as a strong, intelligent woman.

At every single step of her legendary career, as her fame grew into icon and eventually legend status, and as her wealth and personal influence grew and grew, she always used her platform to do tremendous good. That's lesson #1.

But, she expressly created a brand that existed within the existing power structure in order to reform that power structure. That's lesson #2. Ju jitsu-ing our cultural biases into creating a new, better version of that culture.

But how would Dolly's presentation go over today? On Social Media, would the techbro bots and female clicktivists—high on their own cluelessness and dark triad personalities—permit a female artist to try something like that again?

Or would the next Dolly be derided and cancelled for allowing herself to surrender to the 'male gaze' and be a 'victim' (I have a hard time believing Parton was a victim of anyone) of 'systemic oppression'?

I think we know the answer.

And I hope that people who really care about social justice and women's rights start to remember the old way of doing activism. Reform over (imaginary) re-building. True power (which often is behind the scenes, or uses the system against itself)* over tokenism. Real feminism has largely disappeared.**

But maybe it just needs a lift?
~~~

*- Regarding Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's early activism: "She chose plaintiffs carefully, at times picking male plaintiffs to demonstrate that gender discrimination was harmful to both men and women. The laws Ginsburg targeted included those that on the surface appeared beneficial to women, but in fact reinforced the notion that women needed to be dependent on men." (emphasis added)

Hm, male plaintiffs. "Centering" men in order to help women. Imagine that?

**- This post dedicated to my Mom.

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Old Man Yells at Manuscript (My Favorite Short Stories of All-Time) ~~ Counts as Writing #10

Mark Harbinger — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Since nearly my entire creative writing practice has taken place in my forties and fifties—with all printed published works being in the latter decade—I recently became interested in my favorite authors' various ages. That is, how old were they when they wrote (what I considered to be) their best works?

Here are my 24 favorite all-time short stories, listed chronologically, and further subdivided by how old the authors were when they produced them:
~~~~~

19th-Century Authors
“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe (1843) [ As a Young Man ]
“The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” by Edgar Allen Poe (1856) [ In His Forties ] **
“The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forester (1909) [ As a Young Man ]
“Azathoth” by H.P. Lovecraft (1922) [ As a Young Man ]
“The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges (1941) [ In His Forties ]

Greatest Generation Authors While Young
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (1948)
“The Man Who Lost the Sea” by Theodore Sturgeon (1959)
“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes (1959)
“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)

Silent Generation Authors While Young
““Repent, Harlequin!” Said The Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison (1965)
“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison (1967) **

Silent Generation in Their Forties
“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin (1973)
“When I was Ming the Merciless” by Gene Wolfe (1975)
“Jeffty is Five” by Harlan Ellison (1977) ***

Boomer Authors While Young
“Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory” by Orson Scott Card (1979)
“Survivor Type” by Stephen King (1985)
“Nicholas Was” by Neil Gaiman (1989)

50-something Silent Generation Authors
“My Book” by Gene Wolfe (1989) **

Boomer Authors in their Forties
“The Conqueror Worm” by Stephen R. Donaldson (1993)
“Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler (1995)

Gen-X Authors
“The Egg” by Andy Weir (2009) [ In His Forties ]
“What’s Expected of Us” by Ted Chiang (2010) [ As a Young Man ]
“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (2011) [ As a Young Man ]

50-something Boomer Authors
“The October Tale” by Neil Gaiman (2013) **
~~~~~

NOTE: the number of asterisks denotes when the same author has written more than one featured on this list, two asterisks for their second, three for their third, etc.

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50-Word Short (minisaga; dribble): Gen Z Arrival ~~ Counts as Writing #9

Mark Harbinger — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Gen Z Arrival

Macy glances up—Seatac baggage is just empty: forsaken, like Grandma's "guest room". Or home.

S'okay. They/Their world is online. Validation.

The red light spins. Thud! Even with earbuds, she hears the luggage arriving. Across the room she sees her parents approaching. Not smiling.

Back to her phone, they departs.

(2024)

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The Proper Framing for (so called) "Literary Fiction" ~~ Counts as Writing #8

Mark Harbinger — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“Most writers nowadays have to put all their personal opinion and views on ever page of their books. The difference between [LitFic] and [GenreFic] is not style of quality of prose. [It’s that] one makes you think, the other doesn’t…which is why a lot of modern literary fiction that spoon-feeds readers hyper-specific political or social commentary is not literary fiction. While cheap paperbacks with no delusion of grandeur and yet which make you think deeply for a long time after reading them are much more valuable, literarily speaking.”
—Author Hillary Layne, from her YouTube channel “The Second Story”

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Two Poems for National SCUD Day ~~~ Counts as Writing #7

Mark Harbinger — Wed, 8 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Romantasy

A live dragon’s skeleton is filled with blood.
Their plasma burns, as a star
—but it’s only shards of white bone that fall from the sky
when their will breaks and their magicks from within, are consumed

with silent cries, combusted and mute. But should not
their sharp feathers fall just as far?
As fast? As alone?

No one can understand why
they explode, in mid-flight, self-immolating silhouettes upon the sun
leaving only a metallic chalk, argent tincture,
holy talcum to land on us who worship from below.

…although it’s assumed
it all has something to do with relationships.

~~~
No One Can Hear You

My ship’s Censors say it’s all too radioactive to touch.
But I can’t just ignore it, the debris that was…Earth.

I wasn’t going to touch it anyway.

Instead, I use the tractor beams to arrange the largest pieces into a simple message.
A primal directive:

“Release the Epstein Files”

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Why I'll Probably See The Odyssey (blame Tolkein, Campbell, and Jessica Jones) ~~~ Counts as Writing #6

Mark Harbinger — Tue, 7 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I. ESCAPISM, More Than Just Diversion
About 70 years ago, J. R. R. Tolkein (b. 1892) published what became the seminal written work of capital-F fantasy in the 20th Century: The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). But, in his time, he was a minor figure in England's academic circles—well regarded, but not really famous until after LOTR was published.

Although his publishing of The Hobbit seventeen years earlier was enough of a hit that the publisher requested its sequel in the first place. And that's what became LOTR.

Meanwhile, around that same, across the pond, another marginally popular academic—one Joseph Campbell (b. 1904, a professor of Literature)—wrote The Hero With a Thousand Faces, in which he (from his studies of comparative myths throughout history) presented the idea of the Monomyth, or what has popularly come to be called “The Hero's Journey”. Campbell:

“...claimed to have deciphered the common plot of all hero myths...defining [the hero myths' central plot] as the...hero’s journey to a strange, new, divine world. The encounter with the divine occurs in adulthood rather than childhood, involves interaction with gods rather than with parents, and is loving rather than hostile. Understood psychologically, the journey symbolizes the rediscovery of the unconscious, from which an adult has lost contact in the process of growing up.” [Source: here]

This compares favorably, but with some differences, to Tolkein's take on myth and storytelling. Tolkein saw myth as largely escapist—but not (as modern master author Brandon Sanderson recently pointed out, at ~63 min in) as just diversion. But rather, storytelling that helped people act in harmony with themselves, their culture, and also “that awesome ultimate mystery, which is both beyond and withn himself and all things.” [quote from "Tolkien and Campbell Compared”, by Chris Seeman (1991).

What a great description. I mean, Is it any wonder that Tolkein was a mystic?

Campbell, OTOH, saw the myth not as a gateway to something supernatural, but as a code to be cracked in order for us to better deal with the real world. For me, I'm not sure it matters whether the inspiration is divine or humanly divined. But I do know that, like Sanderson, I feel enriched by the best Fantasy stories. And those stories can inspire us to do better.

(BTW, for the record, Campbell was no hero in his personal life. A real piece of ****, by all accounts. But the monomyth framework is still a useful one, so there you go.)
~~~

II. A Shout-out to ANTI-HEROES, too
Or, even a kick-ass SciFi story. Like re-watching the Marvel TV Series Jessica Jones and realizing: WOW! I had missed some of its greatness the first time around. Top Shelf writing and great acting. Some choices in the third season that I wouldn't have made; but, heck, along with Hawkeye and Loki...I wouldn't mind of Marvel just did TV shows if they could tell the difference between greatness like this and dumpster files like Secret Invasion and Echo.
~~~

III. A Real-Life HERO (History Lesson time)
Superhero stories are disregarded by many intellectuals as being “adolescent wish fulfillment”. Like many others, I would couch it more as a pseudo-religion. Mythopoetic storytelling of the highest order. I mean, has the human race ever created a culture, even one single society, that didn't follow some mythopoetic storytelling (and, yes, I'm including religion in that)?

None of this is a particularly original take, except that it wasn't until the past 20 years—when our world, politically and culturally, has seemed to veer away from Enlightenment principles towards barbarism—that I realized that the nature of that myth wasn't so much good guys versus bad guys as it was believing that there were good guys at all, in the first place.

If you only watch one documentary this summer, try to make it THIS ONE. And after you do, hopefully you will believe that a privileged man, after facing some personal tragedy, could become his best self and lead a nation (and the world) out of depression and world war.
~~~

IV. CONCLUSION
If we can recognize that, why can't we believe in myths where the most powerful beings on the planet might actually choose to do what's right?

This is why I think the reflex towards nihilism in Art is so...detrimental to society in general.

Before we can fix what's on the ground, we first have to believe a man (or woman) can fly. Or do Homeric stuff.

See you at the theater.

Best,
:-{D]
_Mark

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"STOP! (Honest) Nails Bar" ~~ Counts as Writing #5

Mark Harbinger — Fri, 3 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A collection of Haiku, republished from Medium 1/1/26
~~~~~
Gaping Wounds

Sometimes when I rub
my eyes, fear keeps them open —
and they bleed the truth

Dark Ages Fantasy

One easy thing to
jumpstart your career! Just learn
to not use AI

Endtimes

Techno-fascism
and muerte. Wherever Podcasts
Are Available

Superman, summer 2025

In the theaters,
kindness bounced off hallowed seats
like childhood pew! pews!

Earworm

Haiku without rules,
“[something] …without tears,” Peter
Gabriel said, “[bla bla]…

…without frontiers”

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Davey, Tell us a Stooooory ~~ Counts as Writing #4

Mark Harbinger — Wed, 1 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I've noticed that most readers (and writers, being largely an unoriginal and mercenary lot) are being trained—by the industry, by big tech algorithms, etc.—to dislike storytelling. This is ironic because we've all been turned into storytellers by the technologies.

In the 20th century ("the before times"), one turned on a TV or a radio show, or bought a book as a deliberate act—adjacent to your life. You stopped doing whatever you did to do media. Now, of course, every minute of our lives is data-collected and shared, as we wash along in the rapids of a never-ending, gamified, dopamine-cycled media river of algorithmically ultra-processed shit. We're all authoring our stories in real-time.

Since before writing, storytelling is what was used to unite cultures and provide social cohesion. Oh, and make life bearable, in general.

So, it sounds like now would be a good time to learn what storytelling is. And what it isn't—or, rather, what techniques I see being used to pre-empt true storytelling for it's ugly step-cousins: advertising and propaganda.
~~~

Here are the STAMS (story-telling avoidance mechanisms) I see being utilized. I'll be expanding on all of these in my Substack:

√ Salting the Earth: Nihilistic 'moral grayness' masquerading as maturity, etc. Postmodernist takes abound—no universal narratives and everyone's just out for themselves. The point is there is no point.

√ The Never-Ending Stories: Unartful monetizing, Fan service oruoboroses, and the IP 'Garden of F**king Paths' (in the multiverse, no one can hear you sigh).

√ Trust Me, I'm an Author: Vagueness masquerading as emotional depth, The Cult of the Sentence giving you the "Occurrences are sufficient" Kool-Aid.

...and one I've already touched on, in the Substack...

√ Everything is Kung Fu—No, I mean "Identity": Since all writing and reading is memoir, both Lit Fic and Genre Fiction are just vehicles for your bespoke, wish fulfillment. Empaths Need Not Apply.
~~~

More to Come.

Best,
_Mark

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Beginning Summer: On my Mark... ~~ Counts as Writing #3

Mark Harbinger — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hey Everyone! Re-acclimating after some end-of-Spring travel. Much more to come. In the meantime, feel free to check out:

√ A NEW SHORT STORY (a 'Tale of Myrrek'—readers of Darlings That Kill will know the reference). It's in four parts, roughly 5-10 minutes reads each. Part I is here.

√ AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY ON LITERARY VERSUS GENRE FICTION. Maybe a new spin on an old discussion? Yeah, probably not. [Spoilers: Essentialism is the Big Bad.] Again, it's on the Substack, and again it's in (three, this time) parts. Part I is here.

Enjoy!

Best,
_Mark

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OK, Let's Review ~~~ Counts as Writing #2

Mark Harbinger — Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Off and on, I set virtual pen to make-believe paper and put my thoughts down regarding books that either i) touched me at a specific time in a specific way; or wherein ii) I've had an interaction with the author and wanted to support them. Or both.

So, here is a list of my twelve (so far) written book reviews. They are all housed at The Storygraph (which I recommend, instead of Goodreads...only 4MM users instead of 150MM, but all the books are there, so who cares?). But I offer these links to you for convenience.
~~~~~

Michaelmas by Algys Budris (SciFi, 5/5)
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (LitFic Fantasy, 5/5)
The Splinterlands Trilogy by John Feffer (Dystopian SciFi, 5/5 (x3))
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang (Thriller, 5/5)

Eight God Engine by O. Josephs (Occult Fantasy, 4.25/5) [which is temporarily unavailable online, I'm looking into it. _M.]
Elantris (10th Anniversary Edition) by Brandon Sanderson (Fantasy, 4/5)

Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay (Historical Fantasy, 4/5)
Platformed by Kelsey Josund (SpecFic LitFic, 4/5)
The Body Scout by Lincoln MIchel (SciFi Mystery, 3.75/5)
Near-Life Experience by Emma G. Rose (Occult Fantasy 3.75/5)

King of Shards by Matthew Kessel (Fantasy 3.25/5)

Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell by Susanna Clarke (LitFic Fantasy, 2/5)

Best to All.
_Mark

6/24 EDIT: Goodreads (after 5 weeks, don't ask) finally put my book up on their site. It's already got a review (5 stars, yo'!).
7/11 EDIT: Re-Added reviews of The Splinterlands Trilogy and Yellowface (which hadn't populated from my GR migration), as well as Elantris and The Body Scout.

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Um, hello? ~~~ Counts as Writing #1

Mark Harbinger — Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to my new blog, which I've titled Counts as Writing.

For those of you unfamiliar: A blog is where one blogs.

Let me explain—A blog is where your blogs, which you have blogged, appear. That is, "blogging" is to do something as of, or pertaining to, a blog. Or, as Shakespeare famously said:* "Wherever one so blogs, there must, therefore, a blog be."

And so. Like the Far Side cartoon where the man paints labels on everything (he paints the word "door" on his front door, "dog" on his dog, etc.), I have to say: "There! That should clear up a few things around here!"

Counts as Writing will be a mix of writing tips, commentary on writing in today's pop culture (micro- and macro- ) environment, fun shares from other artists and thought leaders (past and present), and basically me just "keepin' it re-al".

Sometimes I'll also republish, er...vintage chestnuts from my former blog back at my homepage. But don't go there—oh no, no no. Everyone is supposed to come here. My blog posts will be linked back from my other social media tendrils on Bluesky and the Fediverse so that you can visit here. Here is where it's at.

Trust me. I'm a blogger.

Best,
_Mark

*-No, he didn't.

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