Jeff O'Handley, Author

Jeff O'Handley

The Doubting Writer Finds His Voice

Weekend Update: (Temporary) End of the Cold edition

Greetings, all. Woke up this day to a welcome sight: the mercury in our outdoor thermometer was above zero, which it hasn’t been before sunrise in close to a week. Not that you can feel it, mind you; took the dog out and was surprised at how cold it felt, courtesy of a decent breeze […]

Another lightweight post

“Gonna take two weeks, gonna have a vacation”–Summertime Blues, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Capehart Last night, in the final hour or so before I went to bed, I was writing today’s post in my head, a non-review review of Sleeping Beauties, a 700-plus page doorstopper from Stephen and Owen King. The super condensed review: I liked […]

Weekend Update: Post-travel edition

This past weekend saw us travel for a funeral. On our return trip, we got hung up in the snow that came up the coast, which added an extra two hours–and an untold level of stress–to the drive. The weather reports gave no indication that the storm was going to impact as far as it […]

The struggle to keep current

In the Netflix comedy series, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Ellie Kemper plays Kimmy, a 29-year-old woman who spent literally half of her life imprisoned in an underground bunker with three other women, and the doomsday cultist who kidnapped her when she was 15. Upon being freed, Kimmy decides to move to New York and start fresh, […]

Back to normal…for now

We have a saying around my office to describe those draggy, low-energy days that happen from time to time: “Feels like the day after a board meeting.” That’s because our board meetings take place in the evening, they run typically two, two-and-a-half hours long, and there’s a certain degree of stress in preparing for and […]

Delayed Reaction

On the afternoon of Sunday, May 4, 1974 the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers squared off for game six of the Stanley Cup Final. For the Bruins, a win was needed to send the series back to Boston for one more, winner-take-all game. A Flyers victory would give them the Cup right there. Eight-year-old […]

The Lure of the Shiny

The good news? This isn’t a post about politics, or Harvey Weinstein, or anything really unpleasant. The bad news? I don’t know. Maybe it’s not bad news at all. In fact, there really isn’t much news at all. Saturday was a good day for writing. I am now heading into the final hundred pages of […]

Weekend Update: Summer’s (near) end edition

Well, we’ve hit the penultimate weekend of ‘official’ summer and already we’re seeing the signs of the winding down of the season: one of the big baseball camps in the area is already empty, already moving in the bulldozers and heavy equipment for what will almost certainly be another expansion. The big camp is still […]

Writing and…Cold Cuts?

Last week, we picked up some cold cuts at the deli counter at the supermarket. Ham. Turkey breast. A little Swiss cheese. Tasty stuff. The ham was perfect, thin sheets you could almost see through. The turkey, the same, at least when the clerk held up a slice for me to look at an approve. […]

Put a Bow on it

Yesterday (Sunday, the 16th), at pretty much high noon, I pushed back from the computer, the final chords of the Grateful Dead’s spirited-but-sloppy “Scarlet Begonias” first set closer from July 16, 1976 still ringing in my ears, and said, “Finished.” The latest WiP had been completed. Not finished finished, mind you. In early evening I […]