Thoughts about whatever is rattling around in my brain.
Last week, I wrote a sarcastic little review of a rap concert I attended with my kids. I thought it would be a fun way to preserve the memory for my family and allow some of my blog followers to have a laugh. My intention, and all writers realize this, left my control once … More What I Learned About the Seattle Rap Scene
I fell in love with le Tour de France not when Lance Armstrong won his first, but in 1989 when Greg LeMond came from behind on the last day to beat Laurent Fignon by eight seconds. It was one of the most incredible athletic performances I had ever seen. After racing for nearly a month … More My Love Affair with Lance Armstrong
I woke Friday to thunder and rain. It was a bit heavy-handed of God to provide such weather on the day that I was going to pitch my novel at the PNWA Conference, but God does have a sense of humor. I looked out at the wet sidewalks and realized that even though I … More The Weekend in Oz: Pitches, Lectures and Forums…Oh, my
Seatac is not really part of the Emerald City, but the bastard child of Tacoma and Seattle has its own charm: aging hotels, tourists waiting for another flight, and parking garages. Seatac was home this weekend to the Pacific Northwest Writers Association annual conference and because I wanted to eat unhealthy food, sit without … More A Weekend in Oz
The Middle-of-Nowhere, Kansas is where I was born. It was the wrong place for me to be born. I don’t have much in common with Kansas. Kansas is dirt, I am water. I was moved to Chicago not too long after my birth. It is the first place I remember seeing water, real water. Lake … More I am Water
The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award will be announcing the finalists next week. Calls went out to the three writers this past Monday and the only call I got was from Les Schwab. My brake pads are in, which was good news, but not the news I was hoping for. It certainly has been a great … More The End of the Road
Anyone who runs a blog gets spam and almost all of it gets filtered out and ends up in a trash folder. I like to open the old spam trashcan and take a peek inside. Here is a gem from two days ago. Hi there: thanks for taking the time of creating up this knowledge. … More Sherlock Holmes Meets a Spammer
Yesterday was the biggest cut, the deepest cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. The contest started with 5,000 novels and has been slowly been chopping away for about four months. Yesterday readers from Publisher’s Weekly cut from 250 down to 50 novels and my novel (Six Summers in Paris) made it. It will … More Making the Cut: Part 3
A few months ago I wrote about getting cut from various activities in my life. My life of failure is well documented. Was it Shakespeare who wrote “the first cut is the deepest?” No, that was Cat Stevens. Shakespeare wrote about “the unkindest cut of all.” Nevertheless, if there is one thing Mr. Stevens, Mr. … More Making the Cut Part 2
I can remember being able to remember. There was a time when I did not need an electronic calendar to remind me when I had a meeting. There was a time when I would remember what to pick up in the store without a note. There was a time when I wouldn’t have to record … More The Mystery of Orange 444
South of the Strait 