Frank M. Anderson's Writing

Tag: writing

  • On Working LESS With AI and Why That Was Always The Plan.

    On Working LESS With AI and Why That Was Always The Plan.

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    Recently, I outlined more than 80 potential articles and story ideas for the Seen / Unseen Greenville project I’ve been working on. You may have noticed that I haven’t posted much over the last few weeks. You may not have noticed at all. Either way, it’s been intentional. Part of it is that I needed…

  • FROM THE ARCHIVE #1 — The Lonely White Walker (2012)

    FROM THE ARCHIVE #1 — The Lonely White Walker (2012)

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    Going through old folders tonight, I found The Lonely White Walker—a Walking Dead fanfic I wrote back in 2012—and I was honestly stunned to realize people had reviewed it. Not just clicked on it… actually read it, followed it chapter to chapter, left thoughtful comments, waited for updates. I had forgotten that entirely. And honestly,…

  • Why I’m Releasing My Novel When It’s “Not Ready”

    Why I’m Releasing My Novel When It’s “Not Ready”

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    For the last few months, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I should release my upcoming novel, The Recursive Man, in its current form. Not because I don’t believe in the book. I do. Actually, I think it may be one of the most honest things I’ve ever made. But because I know people…

  • Why Are We So Negative These Days?

    Why Are We So Negative These Days?

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    One thing I’ve been realizing lately is that a lot of negativity starts much smaller than we think. A person encounters something unfamiliar, emotionally uncomfortable, strange, or simply outside their normal frame of reference… and their first reaction is: “I don’t understand this.” But instead of stopping there, that feeling often mutates into:“This is stupid.”“This…

  • Fulcrum & Axis — Where the Work Stands

    Fulcrum & Axis — Where the Work Stands

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    One of the strange things about building a long-term creative body of work is realizing that eventually the projects begin speaking to each other. At first, they feel disconnected:a memoir here,a horror screenplay there,a recursive literary experiment in another folder,a civic history project,a middle-grade camp novel,a political labor story,a fragmented notebook full of grief and…

  • How Grief, Greenville, and a Search for Meaning Slowly Turned Into a Civic Philosophy Project

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    My brother died in 2023. Around the same time, I was already dealing with cancer, mental health struggles, questions about survival, and the growing realization that the life I thought I understood no longer entirely made sense to me. So I started writing. At first, that writing became The Cancer Diet, a memoir about illness,…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: The 1946 Ideal Laundry Explosion — The Forgotten Explosion

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: The 1946 Ideal Laundry Explosion — The Forgotten Explosion

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    The Map Beneath the Map is the historical spine of the Seen / Unseen Greenville project. It explores the idea that cities are layered — that modern Greenville was built on top of older systems, older neighborhoods, older conflicts, and older ways of life that still shape the city today, even when we no longer…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: Woodruff Road and Greenville’s Growing System Problem

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: Woodruff Road and Greenville’s Growing System Problem

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    Future City Greenville is the systems and planning side of Seen / Unseen Greenville. Instead of focusing mainly on history, it explores where Greenville is headed and how growth, infrastructure, development, traffic, housing, and city-county coordination shape daily life. At its core, it asks a simple question: What kind of regional system are we actually…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: What Kind of City Are We Becoming?

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: What Kind of City Are We Becoming?

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    Over the past few weeks, this project has honestly felt a little chaotic at times. I’ve produced a flood of material:-history posts,-city planning discussions,-maps,-timelines,-personal memories,-civic frustrations,-philosophical essays,-local observations,-and probably far too many long-form posts for the average Facebook scroll session. At times, I imagine it has looked less like a coherent project and more like…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: Reading the Budget Like a Map

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: Reading the Budget Like a Map

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    How a city reveals itself through money, priorities, and infrastructure. I’ll admit something upfront: I did not sit down and fully read Greenville’s entire proposed FY2027 budget. What actually caught my attention was a Facebook post from the City of Greenville summarizing some of the major priorities: transportation improvements, trails and greenways, affordable housing initiatives,…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville- Pleasant Roast: A Case Study

    Seen / Unseen Greenville- Pleasant Roast: A Case Study

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    What happens when a city says no—and what replaces it? I still drive past that lot sometimes. Most people probably don’t notice it. It’s just another piece of land sitting beside a road already carrying more traffic than it was designed for. Cars pass it every day without thinking. Another in-between space in a city…

  • The Fulcrum and Axis: The Seen and Unseen- A Diatribe on Trying to Figure Out Life, the Universe, and Everything

    The Fulcrum and Axis: The Seen and Unseen- A Diatribe on Trying to Figure Out Life, the Universe, and Everything

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    Today we are going way up our own butts. I just want to establish that immediately so nobody thinks this is about to become a grounded and practical discussion about taxes or lawn care or whatever emotionally healthy people spend their Sundays doing. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about threshold moments in stories. Those…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: A City Divided

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: A City Divided

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    There are parts of Greenville that feel like they’ve always belonged together. Downtown.The parks.The places people point to when they talk about how far the city has come. And then there are the other parts. The neighborhoods you don’t end up in by accident.The streets that don’t connect the way you expect them to.The invisible…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: When Everything Started Pointing Downtown

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: When Everything Started Pointing Downtown

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    This weekend, downtown Greenville is overflowing for Artisphere. And honestly, that is a good thing. Twenty or thirty years ago, the idea that Greenville would host a nationally respected arts festival drawing huge crowds into downtown would have sounded almost absurd to a lot of locals. The city built something real here. People genuinely want…

  • The Soundtrack of Becoming

    The Soundtrack of Becoming

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    I’ve been thinking lately about how strange my music taste probably looks from the outside. One minute it’s Neurosis. Then Don Williams. Then Atreyu. Then Matisyahu. Then Manchester Orchestra. Then Nine Inch Nails. Then U2. Then some strange ambient soundtrack piece that sounds like a machine trying to pray. On paper, it probably looks chaotic.…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: Whatever Happened to the Clock Restaurants?

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: Whatever Happened to the Clock Restaurants?

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    If you grew up in Greenville, chances are you have a Clock story. I do too. But before I even think about The Clock or Pete’s, I think about Como’s Pete’s. As a kid, that place felt permanent. I can still see it clearly — sitting in the booth, staring at the menu longer than…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: How Fiction Influenced My Reality

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: How Fiction Influenced My Reality

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    I’ve talked a lot recently about Greenville, development, local history, gentrification, empty spaces, civic vision, and the strange contradictions that seem to sit underneath this city I love. Some people have probably wondered where all this came from. A year ago, I wasn’t writing essays about urban planning, Cherokee history, or why certain projects get…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: What Do We Want These Buildings to Be?

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: What Do We Want These Buildings to Be?

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    Lately, as I drive around Greenville and through other parts of South Carolina, I keep returning to a question that became much more personal after my own attempt to open a coffee shop: What do we actually want these empty places to become? That question sounds simple until you try to build something yourself. From…

  • I Enjoy AI, but Don’t Trust the Rollout.

    I Enjoy AI, but Don’t Trust the Rollout.

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    I use AI often now. More often than I expected to. It helps me think. It helps me organize ideas. It helps me challenge my own assumptions when I remember to ask it to do that instead of just flattering me. It helps me write, reflect, brainstorm, plan, and sometimes simply sort through a mind…

  • Four Greenvilles

    Four Greenvilles

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    When people talk about Greenville, they usually talk about it like it is one place with one shared experience. A single city moving in one direction with one story to tell. But that has never really been true. Greenville is several Greenvilles at once. Different versions of the same city, living beside each other, shaping…

  • Greenville Is Too Small

    Greenville Is Too Small

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    Many of us work in hospitals, restaurants, warehouses, offices, schools, hotels, construction sites, retail stores, government buildings, and service industries. We help power the city of Greenville’s success, then return home to communities that may have less funding, less visibility, and less influence over the place they help sustain. That is why, even if it…

  • What’s Going On Here (And Who I Am)

    What’s Going On Here (And Who I Am)

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    If you’re a regular reader here—or just stopping by—I wanted to take a moment to explain what exactly this blog is, what I’m trying to do with it, and who the person behind it actually is. Because like most things in life, the answer is both simple and complicated. What’s Going On Here? Honestly, I’m…

  • Politics, Morality, and the Cost of Tuning Out

    Politics, Morality, and the Cost of Tuning Out

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    Why the Issues That Divide Us May Be Hiding the Ones That Matter Most I’ve been thinking a lot about why politics feels so exhausting right now. Not just frustrating—but draining in a way that makes you want to step away from it completely. The kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from caring too much,…

  • Roundup Post: What I’ve Been Writing Lately (And Why)

    Roundup Post: What I’ve Been Writing Lately (And Why)

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    I’ve been writing a lot lately. Not in a structured, “this is the plan” kind of way, but more in a way where one idea leads into another, and before I realize it, there’s a thread running through everything. I didn’t fully see it at first, but looking back over the last few posts, it’s…

  • Tales of a Midlife Drifter

    Tales of a Midlife Drifter

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    I watched a video recently where a guy described himself as a 35-year-old loser. His message was simple: don’t end up like me. Start now. Build skills. Take action. Stop wasting time. And I get it. There’s truth in that. Drifting too long, avoiding responsibility, never committing to anything—that catches up with you. Time does…

  • I Shouldn’t Be Here Or: On Faith and the Never-Ending Story

    I Shouldn’t Be Here Or: On Faith and the Never-Ending Story

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    I have nearly died more times than I can count. That isn’t hyperbole. I’ve been in hospitals, in rapid decline, close enough to death that it stopped feeling abstract. It’s happened often enough that I can’t even give you an exact number anymore. The closest was a heart attack that killed 14% of my heart…

  • Hope Is Not Passive

    Hope Is Not Passive

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    I’ve always wanted to have a relationship with God. Not just belief, and not just ritual. I want to understand the why behind things—the how. I want to know that there is something beyond myself I can turn to when my own mind runs out of answers. I spoke about doubt recently, and today I…

  • Prayer, Mercy, and the Sound of Now

    Prayer, Mercy, and the Sound of Now

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    How U2 and President lead me to prayer. Music anchors my life. It always has. It fills the silence in a way nothing else can, a constant companion when everything else feels uncertain. There are times I step away from it—intentionally, even—but those breaks never last. I always come back. I need it. Part of…

  • Why We Accept the World As It Is

    Why We Accept the World As It Is

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    I want to start with something simple. A small game I’ve been playing lately. I call it watch the problem spread. Next time you’re stopped at a red light, don’t reach for your phone. Just look around for a second. Watch the cars. Watch the people. Most—if not all—will drop their heads almost immediately. The…

  • Life Feeds on Life: The Cost of Being Alive

    Life Feeds on Life: The Cost of Being Alive

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    I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of human existence lately. It feels like the path—if there is one—is something like this: First, know yourself.Then, learn to love and accept other people.Then, maybe, you can begin to understand and love God. I don’t think you can skip steps. I don’t think you can jump…

  • Easter, and the God of Doubt

    Easter, and the God of Doubt

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    I’ve started to wonder if we’ve been thinking about God the wrong way. Not as something hidden from us—but as something that lives in the very doubt we struggle with. That idea would have frustrated me before. It still does, if I’m being honest. Because if God is real, if any of this matters, then…

  • What I Couldn’t Say To My Son

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    The other day my son told me he might want to join the military. Or maybe become a police officer. My heart dropped. I didn’t react the way he probably expected. I didn’t argue. I didn’t lecture. I didn’t tell him he was wrong. But inside, something in me tightened immediately. Because I value having…

  • Where the Writing Stands Right Now

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    I’m in a different phase of the work now. For a while, what I needed most was to get things out of my head and onto the page. A lot of that material had been building for years—some of it since I was a kid—and it needed release before it could be understood. Now the…

  • Learning the Rhythm of the New Room

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    This is the new room. Not finished. Not optimized. Just honest enough to work in. It’s where the desk lives now. Where the drums sit close enough to matter. Where I can make noise—literal and otherwise—without worrying about shared walls or quiet hours. A house instead of a condo. More air. More room to think…

  • On Change, Catastrophe, and Balance

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    For a long time, I believed that change meant death—or at least the possibility of it. Not metaphorical death. Not ego death. Real, physical, catastrophic endings. That belief didn’t come from nowhere. It came from impact. From accidents. From moments where the world didn’t just shift, but hit. The waterfall incident. My teeth. A baseball…

  • One Last Session Here

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    So this is my last session sitting in the brain of this operation. This place has been my office and my condo here in Greenville, South Carolina—near downtown, by the YMCA, close to where I grew up. And today it’s making me a little wistful. This space has been a kind of protective bubble for…

  • Big news incoming.

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    Things have been brewing quickly in the mad scientist’s lab of my brain, and the results are almost ready to escape into the world. How soon? Weeks, not months. Here’s what’s going on. Trying to Be Good Trying to Be Good is a small, quiet book.It isn’t a memoir in the traditional sense, and it…

  • On AI, Sloppiness, and Being Honest About the Work

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    When I was a kid, I used to get out of trouble by punishing myself harder than anyone else could. I’d replay mistakes in my head, pick them apart, scold myself privately until whatever authority figure was involved decided I’d clearly “learned my lesson.” In reality, I was just being left alone with my thoughts—and…

  • The Lying Years Is Out — and Where the Work Is Headed Now

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    I quietly released The Lying Years this week. There wasn’t a launch plan or a marketing push. I didn’t run ads or build anticipation. I posted about it a few times and let it go. That wasn’t avoidance. It was intentional. What The Lying Years Is The Lying Years is the second of two memoirs…

  • What the AI Thought About My Reading Habits

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    Based on the Books and Comics That Shaped Me If you really want to understand a writer, don’t ask them about their influences.Ask them what they consumed when they were too young to know they were forming a worldview. When the AI looked at the books and comics that shaped me, it didn’t see a…

  • My College Comics: How they show my path as a writer.

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    By Francis Anderson When I think about how I became a writer, I don’t picture the usual origin scenes. I don’t picture myself reading The Chronicle of Narnia on my bedroom floor, or staying up late with Stephen King novels I was far too young to understand. I don’t even picture the first time a…

  • The Quiet Work of Patience (and Why I Don’t Force My Books Anymore)

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    I’ve learned something about myself as a writer that I wish I’d understood years ago: My best work happens when I’m not working. Not in the literal sense — I write constantly. But the real shape of a book doesn’t come from typing. It comes from the quiet, invisible stages in between. I move through…

  • A Tale of Two Settings

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    Two places shape my world more than any others:the Veil and the Axis.They are the quiet machinery behind every fracture in reality,two halves of a single moment when everything began to separate. THE VEIL The Veil is where the world forgets its outline. A thin, unmapped space of fog and almost-forms,where landscapes fade after a…

  • The Literary Revolution No One Wants to Admit Is Happening

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    By Francis Anderson, Fulcrum & Axis Press For most of my life, writing felt like a lonely act — a private wrestling match with memory, imagination, and the page. Then, almost overnight, something changed. A new tool arrived, not with fanfare or permission, but with a quiet suggestion: “Try me.” People expected a calculator.Or a…

  • How The Lying Years Connects to Everything Else I Write

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    (And Why the Memoir Is the Key to My Entire Universe) When people hear I’m working on a recursive novel cycle, a supernatural thriller, a grief-driven metafiction, and a memoir all at once, they usually assume the memoir is the “real-life” outlier — the personal book sitting off to the side while the imaginative fiction…

  • Jazz Writing, AI Partnership, and Wolf Wounds

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    I’m gearing up for a second round of Wolf Wounds work, and before I dive back in, I need to explain something about my process—because I’m beginning to see that I work differently than most writers, and that difference is going to matter for anyone following along. A few nights ago, I joked that I…

  • THE SPIRE MANIFESTO

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    How My Stories Connect, Why I Write Across Genres, and What the Spire Really Is I don’t write books the way other people do.I don’t pick a genre, plant a flag, and stay there. I can’t.My brain doesn’t work in straight lines. My life didn’t either. Instead, I write the way I live: in recursion,in…

  • The Secret Thread Beneath Wolf Wounds – Update #5

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    (How It Quietly Connects to the Grammar for the Dead Universe)** As I’ve been building Wolf Wounds — shaping the outline, organizing the acts in Atticus, figuring out emotional arcs — I’ve also been thinking about how this book fits inside the larger universe I’m creating across all my projects. Some readers already know about…

  • Wolf Wounds Update #4 — Building the Full Outline

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    Today I want to walk through the exact process I used to turn Wolf Wounds from a loose idea into a full structural outline. It started, as most of my books do, with a call-and-response session between me and the AI — a creative volley where I push, it pushes back, and together we find…

  • Wolf Wounds — Update 3

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    How I Actually Build a Story With AI (The Real Process)** Dec 6, 2025 Every book teaches me something different, and Wolf Wounds is teaching me how to trust the process more than the hype. I’m not trying to “make content.” I’m trying to build something honest that feels alive. So this update isn’t about…

  • THE INTERVieW

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    A self-interrogation in two acts.Questions by ChatGPT. Answers by Frank M. Anderson.No softballs. No comfort. No mythmaking. ROUND ONE 1. If The Cancer Diet was written to survive, why publish it? Frank:I’ve always wanted to be a published author, but more than anything, I wanted to leave something for my son. Something he could read…

  • An Introduction to The Cancer Diet and The Lying Years

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    Two memoirs. One story told from opposite sides of the same collapse. Some books are written to chronicle a life.These two were written to survive one. The Cancer Diet and The Lying Years form a matched pair—two memoirs that circle the same events, the same wounds, the same city, and the same self, but from…

  • Where I Do (and Don’t) Fit in Publishing

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    by Frank M. Anderson Publishing has never been a one-size-fits-all ecosystem. Some writers thrive in the institution. Some thrive in chaos. Some thrive in the middle. And then there are writers like me — the ones who don’t fit cleanly into either lane because the work itself refuses to be molded into something neat, predictable,…

  • How a Trope Became a Lifeline in WOLF WOUNDS – Wolf Wounds Update 2

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    Every book reaches a moment where the plot stops needing more monsters, explosions, or twists —and starts needing a person. Not a hero.Not a villain.Not a love interest. A functional adult who walks onstage and stabilizes the room simply by existing. Someone who knows the world already.Someone who has been through hell and can translate…

  • The Myth of AI Slop: Why the Internet Is Yelling at Ghosts

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    By Frank M. Anderson I don’t know when exactly “AI slop” became a slur, but it’s out there. Somewhere between a Reddit review and a Kindle comment, the phrase crystallized: AI + book = trash. That equation is broadcast like a fact — unexamined, unproven, dismissed. Here’s the truth: what people call “AI-slop” is almost…

  • The Fulcrum & Axis Theorem: Why I Write the Way I Write

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    Every writer has a center of gravity—some quiet idea their work keeps returning to, even when they aren’t trying. It took me years, a memoir, a few broken novels, and a whole lot of personal upheaval to understand mine. I call it The Fulcrum & Axis Theorem. It sounds fancy, but I promise it’s not.…

  • Welcome to Fulcrum & Axis Press. Home of the writings of Frank M. Anderson.

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    If Tolkien explored extreme goodness in the face of extreme evil, my work asks something more intimate, more unsettling:What is the nature of you?And—once you see the world clearly—what do you do with that knowledge? Where Tolkien gave us mythic clarity and King gave us mythic suffering,the universes I am creating push into the space…

  • Writing Update — My Six-Month Release Plan & Where Every Project Stands

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    Over the last year, my creative life has shifted in a major way. I’m writing steadily, finishing work, and starting to see how all my books — memoirs, fiction, and strange hybrid projects — fit together. For the first time, I’m choosing to treat writing like a long-term career rather than a string of isolated…

  • Why I’m a Southern Leftist

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    The more I look at things, the more I realize that communication is our number one problem and our biggest benefit. We’re losing the ability to talk to each other — really talk — across lines of difference. We speak in rehearsed slogans, defend our tribes, and mistake volume for conviction. But if I could…

  • The Empathy War 2: Charlie Kirk and the Cost of Easy Stories

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    This article is a follow up and expansion of this older article – https://fulcrumandaxis.com/2025/05/22/the-empathy-war-why-stories-are-the-battlegroundby-frank-m-anderson/ I don’t know exactly when empathy became controversial—but I know I felt it. First as a writer. Then as a teacher. And now as a father watching entire shelves of books disappear from schools. Today, that feeling got louder. On September…

  • Update 9/10/2025 – I’m not dead, I’ve just been quiet.

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    I’m not dead, I’ve just been quiet. I did a couple articles for Medium, and since then I’ve been concentrating on making some packets of school lesson plans to get myself back in the swing of teaching that I’ve uploaded to Teachers Pay Teachers. I’ve got a couple I’m going to do, and I think…

  • Update 8/26/25

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    We’ve made an important adjustment: the e-book edition of The Cancer Diet is now available for $4.99. So far, the paperback has sold far more copies than the e-book—which honestly surprised us. We expected digital to be the main entry point, but readers have gravitated toward the physical book. If you’ve been thinking about it,…

  • The Moon in My Mood: How Lunar Cycles Show Up in My Bipolar Blogging

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    I’ve always known that bipolar comes in cycles—bursts of manic energy, followed by the crash of depression. But recently I discovered something I didn’t expect: my moods don’t just swing on their own schedule. They seem to move with the moon. Looking back at my blog stats, I could already see the rhythm: a manic…

  • The Real Putin and Trump: Strength or Spectacle?

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    Supporters of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump praise them for toughness, economic savvy, authenticity, and national pride. But those supposed virtues collapse under scrutiny. Both men are masters of spectacle, using image to mask behavior that weakens the very societies they claim to protect. Putin: The Mob Boss in a Suit Putin’s aura of strength…

  • What I Won’t Do as an Author (and What I Will)

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    Books are asking a lot of people these days. Time, focus, attention — all of it feels scarce in a world full of noise, streaming services, doomscrolling, and endless distractions. Reading is an investment. When someone chooses to spend those hours with me, I take it seriously. That’s why I’ve been thinking not just about…

  • Breaking Through the Bubble: The Strange Mercy of the Algorithm

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    I don’t trust the algorithm.Not really. But I’ll admit this much: it’s doing a better job of feeding me music I love than most of the avenues real life offers right now. Everyone is in their own bubble these days—tuned into their curated feeds, their scene, their streaming loops—and it takes a lot for something…

  • Mania, Productivity, and the Montage of Joy

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    There’s a strange mixture of energy running through me right now. Mania has me up at three in the morning, typing away, words pouring out faster than I can believe. Thirteen chapters in a day. It feels incredible, but it’s also terrifying. Mania is dangerous. It’s not just “being in a good mood.” It’s a…

  • Francis FM: The Longform Broadcast

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    Curated by Francis Anderson This isn’t a playlist—it’s a broadcast. A rotating, living archive of whatever’s hitting hard right now, spanning decades, genres, and moods. Built like a radio station without commercials, it’s a setlist for life’s shifts and stumbles. I listen to music differently from most. No Spotify, just an Apple Music account or…

  • From The Cancer Diet to The Lying Years: Radical Honesty, Flexibility, and the Long Way Around

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    When I finished The Cancer Diet, I thought I knew exactly where I was going next.I packaged the file, sent it off for publication, and felt that strange mixture of relief and anticipation that comes with letting a book go. The last lines were barely dry before I could see the shape of the next…

  • You’ve Got to Read This S**t!

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    Hey everyone, A lot has been going on behind the scenes lately, and I’ve been working really hard to stay in a good place creatively and personally. I have to say, the work that’s been coming out of this process has been nothing short of crazy amazing. And yes, that includes the collaboration between me…

  • Electric Jesus, Capitalism, and the Quiet Fight for the Future

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    What started as a casual back-and-forth about AI ended up somewhere between gospel, outrage, and a love letter to creative resistance. It started with a post by my friend Will Asbury, who made a sharp point about all the AI fear swirling around the internet: “While you’re scared and bitching about AI, others of us…

  • Radical Honesty – On Politics and Fascism

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    I’ve been thinking a lot about honesty lately — not the polite, softened kind, but the real kind. The kind that risks making people uncomfortable. The kind that might cost you friends, but leaves you knowing you said what you actually meant. That’s the thread I’ve been pulling with these Radical Honesty pieces. It’s part…

  • Radical Honesty—Women and Love

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    I am trying to live by applying the concept of radical honesty to my life. Here is the first of those- https://fulcrumandaxis.com/2025/08/13/radical-honesty-porn/ Love has always been hard for me.I’ve always wanted it—especially with a kind, loving woman—but I’ve just as often felt like it was unattainable. Kept at arm’s length. Not meant for me in…

  • Radical Honesty – Porn

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    Content Warning: This post discusses pornography, sexual themes, and personal relationship struggles, including references to early exposure to sexual content. Reader discretion advised. When I talk about radical honesty, I don’t mean the kind where you blurt out every passing thought and call it “just being real.” I mean the kind that takes your private…

  • Saying the Word -Suicide- (A Braid with Ren)

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    Content Warning: This chapter speaks plainly about suicide, addiction, depression, and male mental health. I won’t describe methods. If you’re in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988. This is a companion piece to On Suicide- https://fulcrumandaxis.com/2025/05/19/on-suicide/ I didn’t find Ren by wandering a record store; he found me through the machine. “Hi Ren”…

  • Electric Jesus: Freedom Over Fixes

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    Part I (“All Hail Electric Jesus”): https://fulcrumandaxis.com/2025/06/03/all-hail-electric-jesus/NoodleQuest mini-manifesto: https://fulcrumandaxis.com/2025/08/09/noodlequest-an-ai-that-makes-you-think-not-just-answer/ I wrote All Hail Electric Jesus in a fog—pain, no sleep, too many doubts—and asked a reckless question: could a book midwife a mind? The idea was a novel co-written with an AI, told like a gospel/diary, tracking a strange, intimate awakening through recursive conversation with…

  • Where I Am Now

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    Lately, I’ve been combing through my old lyrics while updating my Music Hub — pulling out lines from the Incarrion era and holding them up against where I am now. What started as a simple archival project quickly turned into something else: a mirror. The more I compared the songs to my current writing, the…

  • The Music Hub Is Live

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    I’ve always kept my music scattered — some on SoundCloud, some buried in old hard drives, and too many sitting unheard because they never felt “finished” enough.Today, I’m fixing that. I’ve put together a Music Hub where you can hear the full range of what I’ve been working on, past and present. That means: Some…

  • The Spectrum and the Space Between

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    At the table, I laugh at the right moments. I tell stories that are just risky enough to make me seem open, but never so revealing that they could get me labeled. The conversation turns to dating, to attraction, to “type.” I edit myself in real time — trimming pronouns, rearranging sentences, steering away from…

  • NoodleQuest: An AI That Makes You Think, Not Just Answer

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    Most AI tools are built for speed. You ask a question, it gives an answer. And if you’re not careful, you start treating that first answer like gospel. It’s quick, it’s neat, it’s efficient — and it quietly kills curiosity. That’s where my idea for NoodleQuest came from. I’ll never be able to make the…

  • Electric Jesus, Border Collies, and the Nature of Things: A Conversation with ChatGPT on ChatGPT

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    This isn’t an essay so much as a wandering talk. It started with a friend’s post about AI, picked up with my own reply, and ended up somewhere between philosophy, economics, and metaphors about dogs. Will Asbury wrote: While you’re scared and bitching about AI, others of us are embracing a new medium and technology.…

  • Love in the Vortex: A Response to Zen Prem and the Collapse of Dating Culture

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    Zen Prem’s “Modern Love (Part 4): The Uprising of ‘Rather Be Alone Than in Another Relatingshit’” hit my feed recently, and it landed hard. Some men are angry. Others are brushing it off.I flinched too—at first.But when I sat with it, the uncomfortable truth came into focus: He’s not just right about some men. He’s…

  • Life in the Friend Zone 3: The Ones We Let Hurt Us

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    I met her on Facebook.(It’s becoming a pattern—I know.) She showed up in a comment thread. One of those dark little zingers that hits harder than it should. I don’t remember the post, but I remember the feeling—that flash of, “Oh. She gets it.” Bleak humor. Dry. The kind that cuts right to the bone.…

  • Life in the Friend Zone 2: When It Was Never a Zone, Just a One-Way Street

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    We talk about the “friend zone” like it’s some external place we’re shoved into—like someone else stuck us there because we were too kind, too honest, too whatever. But the more I live, the more I realize that the so-called friend zone isn’t a punishment—it’s a perception. And it’s ours. Because when you truly care…

  • Reflections After the Fire: On AI, Authorship, and “Grammar for the Dead”

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    I didn’t expect this post to get much reaction at all, let alone light up the way it did. But that’s part of what I’ve come to accept about working in public—you never know which match is going to catch. So here’s what I’ve been sitting with since I posted the preview of Grammar for…

  • Trying to Sell Your Story — The Title

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    How I landed on “Grammar for the Dead” and wrote the blurb without killing the vibe The NeverEnding Story for adults, put through a gothic horror lens with a metaphysical breakdown of the book so that you, the author, and all possibility becomes part of the tale. That’s the elevator pitch.I can’t tell you how…

  • Life in the Friend Zone

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    There’s a specific kind of loneliness that comes with being the “safe guy.”The one women say they trust, admire, open up to, call “kind,” “sweet,” and “safe.”The guy they tell everything to—except that they love him. I’ve lived there. I still do, sometimes.And I won’t lie: it messes with your head. It’s not that I…

  • Don’t Just Consume—Create: Curiosity, Ego, and Staying Human in the Age of AI

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    We live in a strange and overwhelming time. Information is everywhere. Content floods every feed. AI is becoming ubiquitous—ready to answer our questions, draft our content, mimic our voices, and even shape what we see. As writers, teachers, artists, and thinkers, we’re not just adjusting to this new landscape—we’re swimming upstream through it, trying to…

  • The Real Problem Isn’t AI—It’s Us

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    There’s a lot of hand-wringing about AI these days. Depending on who you ask, it’s either going to solve all our problems or destroy humanity in a burst of algorithmic malice. The truth? I’m not worried about AI “killing us.” We’re already doing a pretty good job of that ourselves. When I think about the…

  • Behind the Curtain: 7 Unpublished Projects I’m (Still) Writing

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    By Frank M. Anderson I spend a lot of my life writing — sometimes in furious bursts, sometimes in slow burns that smolder until the words feel right. Not everything I write is out in the world yet, but I wanted to pull back the curtain on seven projects currently in progress. These are the…

  • 🧠 Rewriting the Narrator: Why I Joined the Freedom Program

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    Ten days ago, I was preparing to celebrate my birthday with something I never thought I’d live long enough to receive: the quiet relief of still being here. For those who’ve read The Cancer Diet, you know how close I came to not seeing this year at all. The book was supposed to be a…