Dispatches with Jonny Eberle

Tech giants are making billions of dollars from their A.I. chatbots, which are trained on content they scrape from websites across the internet—websites like mine. Are artificial intelligence compani…

There are themes writers are drawn to over and over again. For me, one of those themes is the idea of nostalgia. In this three-part series, I'll unpack what nostalgia means and how it shapes the stor…

There are themes writers are drawn to over and over again. For me, one of those themes is the idea of nostalgia. In this three-part series, I'll unpack what nostalgia means and how it shapes the stor…

There are themes writers are drawn to over and over again. For me, one of those themes is the idea of nostalgia. In this three-part series, I'll unpack what nostalgia means and how it shapes the stor…

"His dreams were growing more vivid all the time. It was a side effect of the strain of time travel on the human mind." To kick off season three, Jonny reads his speculative short story, Firemaker, w…

This is “Dispatches with Jonny Eberle,” a podcast about writing, travel, and the creative process. In each bite-sized episode, I take you inside the writing life. We’ll talk about everything from wha…

Jonny interviews fantasy author Thomas D. Lee about his debut novel, which is out now. Perilous Times is a contemporary fantasy that pits the Knights of the Round Table against the existential threat…

As a kid, the Star Trek franchise had a profound effect on me, but it wasn't until I was a teenager playing a text-based roleplay game that Star Trek began to influence my growth as a writer and stor…

There are a lot of story structures out there—the Hero's Journey, Dan Harmon's Story Circle—but in this episode, Jonny introduces a far simpler alternative, a stranger rides into town, its history, a…

Does ChatGPT have what it takes to compete with humans in the realm of creative writing? In this dispatch, Jonny investigates whether A.I. language models can write as well as he can—and comes to som…

"I want to swim in the canals on Mars," says the mysterious man in Jonny Eberle's 2014 short story, "The Observable Universe," a piece about life, death, and our place in the vast universe. The story…

It this dispatch, Jonny lays out his evolving thinking on how to revise fiction with a simple framework—chainsaw edits vs. scalpel edits—and how it took him so long to finally accept that editing is …

In today's dispatch, Jonny explains how he went from a concept to the first draft of a novel in four months with three simple ingredients: an unpredictable sleep schedule, Google Docs for iPhone, and…

In today's dispatch, Jonny reads his short story "Bad Air and Bitter Herbs" published by Creative Colloquy in 2020. This piece of fiction asks us to imagine a world where the medieval plague doctor n…

Happy Early Lunar New Year! In today's dispatch, Jonny shares his first experience of participating in monkeyshines, a quirky annual tradition where glass artists hide handcrafted floats and medallio…

In 1998, a mouse changed U.S. copyright law forever—and nearly destroyed the public domain in the process. In today's dispatch, Jonny talks about the importance of the public domain for artists and w…

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? In today's dispatch, Jonny shares a piece he wrote on New Year's Eve 2019, just weeks before a global pandemic upended everyone's lives. …

Sit back and pour yourself some hot cocoa because in today's dispatch, Jonny shares his holiday-themed short story, "The Evidence for Coal." Special thanks to William McDonald for his narration. You …

New York, New York. In today's dispatch, a story about writing, creativity, and travel takes us all the way to the Big Apple.

Jonny Eberle is a writer, podcaster, filmmaker, and photographer. He lives…

Only in silence the word, only in dark the light. In today's dispatch, Jonny revisits Ursula K. LeGuin's groundbreaking fantasy novel "A Wizard of Earthsea" and how it influenced his development as a…