The Gambler (Part II: Gone Fishing)

I need a new metaphor. Last week I compared the act of writing to playing poker. “Stick it out,” I said. “You’re book will never get written if you fold your hand every time the going gets rough.” I believe that, too. The problem is, writing really isn’t like gambling (unless you’ve quit your day […]

Musical Monday

I don’t have much to say today, it was a quiet weekend from a writing perspective, though I started an interesting (in my view) literary piece involving a mosquito’s search for blood (it was a strange mood, for sure). So, I’ll use this snippet from the DVD The Closing of Winterland, the Grateful Dead performing […]

The Gambler (Part I)

“Now, ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’ Is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.” – “The Gambler,” Don Schlitz I recall a period in the late 70’s and early ‘80’s when country music was king. Considering I grew up in a suburban enclave a mere thirty miles from New […]

Another Weekend Done

This was one of those weekends that was largely unsatisfying from a writing perspective. For one thing, I never quite recovered from my mid-week jaunt downstate for a funeral. I was only gone for a day and a half, but it felt much longer than that. I didn’t get back until Thursday evening, and never […]

Reaching ‘The End’

When you cook, it’s usually easy to know when something’s done. Recipes and cookbooks and cake mix boxes are full of phrases like “Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 35-45 minutes”; “Cook until tender and golden brown, about 1-1/4 hours”; or “Cook until a meat thermometer reads 160.” How simple […]

Sweet Words

Off schedule again. The long weekend completely screwed me up. It wasn’t until Tuesday morning rolled around that I realized I missed my Monday post. Between the holiday and being in deep with my novel revision and another, shorter piece, that had been consuming my brain, I couldn’t toss anything together. Until now, the big […]

The Magic Bullet

The Magic Bullet. It’s a trope common to fantasy and horror, the projectile that stops a monster dead in its tracks. It breaks the unbreakable spells, kills the unkillable monsters. The best known Magic Bullet is an actual bullet, made of silver; useful for stopping werewolves, but the Magic Bullet can be anything. Vampires get […]

Move Along, Folks…

…there’s nothing to see here. Some days, you just don’t have much to say. Today is one of those days. It probably would have been better to post nothing, than to post something that says nothing. If you’re unhappy that you’ve come all the way over here for this, my apologies. I’ll do better on […]

Genius at Work

“I feel that a straightforward statement of my original intent robs the listener of personal associations and replaces them with my own.” – Robert Hunter   My daughter’s class recently completed a unit centered on Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. As part of the unit each student interviewed a member of the community they admired, developed […]

The Shadow Man

A few days before I launched this blog, I woke up screaming from a nightmare for the first time in years. In the dream I stood on a small ladder, my head stuck through a small hatchway as I inspected my attic. In typical dream fashion, it only looked a little like my real attic, […]