Still Writing after All These Years
When I think about my plunge into the emotional smoothy-blender we call “writing fiction,” I usually credit an experience from late 2002 that inspired me to write a novel, tentatively entitled When the Sun Stood Still. (And aside from the fact that you can’t actually pronounce that title, I still like it.) I quickly discovered […]
Spring in New England
This morning, a radio ad began, “Now that the beautiful spring weather is here in New England…” Ha! Good joke! Especially for April Fool’s. That made my day. You see, God sometimes has a bizarre sense of humor. One year, for April Fool’s, he allowed me to get laid off from my job, and so […]
Running on Coffee Fumes
This past week has been the busiest writing week in a long time. I’ve decided to focus more of my effort at my writing blog, including posting each morning a link to an interesting article along with my comments. Most afternoons, I’m still posting a writing article there, too. It’s been exceptionally easy to come […]
O, Phil, How Thou Dost Deceive Me!
This is so not fun. This morning, when I checked my outdoor digital thermometer, the sight buoyed my spirits. I honestly thought it said 68°F. After all, yesterday the temperature hit 50. Why shouldn’t it get even warmer today? Somehow, first thing in the morning, that made sense. In my morning stupor, I had missed […]
Some Photos I Found on My Cell Phone
Once upon a time, I couldn’t see the point of these new-fangled gadget cell phones that can text-message, play MP3’s, take pictures, and sometimes can just barely not even make a phone call. (You know what I’m talking about.) Today, however, I copied all the files from my cell phone onto my computer, and I […]
Rats, Naked, and a Fast Car
Over the past two days, I’ve been (a) digging out from under more than a foot of snow and (b) taxiing everyone around in the Corolla (because the Saturn is still stuck in more than a foot of snow). The Little One has had three days off from school, and my Firstborn is perhaps weighing […]
Definitely, Is an SUV
Now that it’s a new year, Fridays I’ll still post something that is (supposed to be) humorous. These posts are furthermore still tagged “Friday Fun,” even though I’m no longer including the “Friday Fun” tag in the subject. There’s a game I play sometimes while I’m driving, called “SUV, Not SUV.” Because I bet there’s […]
Get Me a Piece of That Action
As you may know, I’m a big fan of Penn & Teller’s Showtime series, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, in which the trickster duo exposes, rips apart, and generally makes fun of various nonsense: mediums who claim to talk to the dead, acupuncturists, feng shui consultants, other new-age practitioners, self-help gurus, conspiracy theorists, big-foot hunters, politicians… […]
When You Don’t Feel Funny
Springtime is upon us here in New England, and you know what that means: rain, sun, sleet, rain, bitter cold, sweltering heat, wind, snow, rain, green grass, birds chirping, and—most significantly—taxes. And it is this last that makes me feel like blech. Let’s be clear about this. Taxes are not the price we pay for […]
The 5 Rules of Book Reviews
Authors and publishers, in my opinion, spend way too much time sucking up to literary critics, which is why I decided to become a book reviewer. Of course, no critic actually deserves the respect he gets (myself included), not for his opinion in any case. And I dare say, publishers wouldn’t give critics the time […]