Jeff O'Handley, Author

Jeff O'Handley

The Doubting Writer Finds His Voice

Hyperbole!

I’m in a cranky mood. We all but ran out of coffee, so I’m drinking lo-test. I pop on Absolute Write and feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day–“How many pages should be in a chapter?” “Should I include a prologue?” Someone I’ve never heard of wants to be Facebook friends. My g-mail is getting […]

Weekend Update: Congratulations to my Friends!

A long, long time ago, I started poking around the internet, looking for writing stuff: places that could help me improve as a writer, places that would give me information on where I could publisher–err, try to publish–the couple of short stories I had sweated out, and what to do about the ideas that were […]

Word Nerd Friday: Hoodwink

I was vowing that I was going to write something a little more serious today, but like much of the summer, this week sort of got away from me. Funny how that happens, isn’t it? Meanwhile, maybe it was last week’s post where I referenced driving around with boxed-up birds in the back of my […]

Weekend Update: Chestnut Edition

And so it begins. The kids are clamoring for back-to-school stuff, and, in the Magpie’s case, off-to-Japan stuff. They know how fast the next two, three weeks will go. The Catbird starts cross country practice today, the Magpie heads over the ocean (actually, we looked at the flight path; she spends very little time actually […]

Lead Foot

True confession time: I have a lead foot. I drive fast. Not as fast as Winston Wolfe (“It’s thirty minutes away. I’ll be there in ten.”), but consistently fast. While I’m much better about it than I used to be–I no longer find myself doing 80 on the interstate, for example, at least not on […]

Musical Monday: Someone Keeps Moving My Chair

There may be a quirkier band in all the land than They Might Be Giants–but I haven’t found them yet. The song goes back almost 25 years at this point (cry) to their 1990 album, Flood. The video was made by an 11-year-old boy several years ago. It works, in my opinion. In other news, […]

Chief Wahoo Converted

Last week, I saw a story on the web about a t-shirt that had gotten suddenly popular on several reserves of the Ontario First Nations. Here’s the shirt, a parody of Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians lettering and logo: The t-shirt came to prominence when a member of the group A Tribe Called Red wore […]

Monday Musing: It’s Good? Really?

Sorry I’m late. I do like to try to be consistent, but I overslept this morning and it was a crazy day where we all of us had to be out of the house early so something had to give and it was the blog. If you missed my 6:30 or so appearance, my apologies; […]

Phrase Nerd Friday: Dog Days of Summer

First, some music. I find this video strangely disturbing. Must be the make-up. Or something: Unlike the song, the Dog Days are just beginning. But where does that phrase come from? Why ‘Dog Days’? Glad you asked. I have always thought of the Dog Days of summer as being that period in August, which, where […]