Once in awhile, with family friends or fellow patrons at the pub, I get asked, “What got you into music?” My first deep dive into music started after I quit basketball in High School. It accompanied my deep dive into faith. The band I started with was the one who kept being played every thirty […]
Blog
First step / trick / advice to writing a book / novel
I have 2 books scattered unevenly throughout 5 books. I’m fresh off a near-6 year tech Odyssey and back on the shores of Ithaca. I still see the writing rust speckled about the floor when I get up from the table after another session. With all that little authority, the first piece of advice I […]
A Through Line (or Spine) in a story. How I heard it.
Over the weekend I drafted out the top-level chapter names for the fifth-first book, again. I read them off to Katie and explained a little bit about each. She lit up like a Christmas tree and exclaimed: “Yeah. I really like how the through lines work.” I nodded, agreed, thanked her, and replied with an […]
[Review] “Beatlebone” by Kevin Barry. I was looking for Prose and got a delightful story about John Lennon.
As I last wrote about back in March, I wanted a book with prose. While with Katie at Town Center Books in Pleasanton, CA the week before I had to head back to Indiana for most of the Spring, we asked the college student working the shop for such a prose-y book. He told us […]
Where to find the Altamont Free Concert host location
I pride myself on knowing more than my friends do about the 1960s British Invasion. The era is still my go-to music when I need a pick-me-up. That said, in the short time we had to research our new home in Bay Area before we were on the road this way, it never registered that […]
[Review] “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed.
Last Sunday, Katie and I were bumming up and down Main St. in Pleasanton when she found a little book shop nestled in an old, iconic house. Town Center Books, I discovered the name when I went to pay. Pretty cool little niche place. Our Barnes & Noble membership didn’t work there and there was […]
The history of predicting Doctor Who’s Next Doctor on the Betting Boards.
Update: BBC announced on Friday, July 14th, 2017 that the 13th Doctor will be announced after the Wimbledon Men’s Final on July 16, 2017. No sooner was it announced then Jodie Whittaker, one of the central characters in new Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall’s last show, Broadchurch, shot up the betting boards. She’s now even […]
Allergies for new Bay Area Residents within 3 years of moving here? It happened to us, too. But…
One of the things we were told to prepare for when moving from Chicago to San Francisco was that we were going to develop allergies within three years, but that we’d adjust. We had doctors tell us that, friends tell us that, blogs tell us that… But we dismissed the warnings because we thought we […]
”Santa Clarita Diet” Season 1. “I just stuffed a man in a meat freezer.”
Release Date: Stars: Drew Barrymore (seriously, it’s Drew Barrymore), Timothy Olyphant (Justified… Deadwood) Episodes in Season: 10 Avg. Length of Episodes give or take: about 45-50 minutes Genre: Comedy & light gore Language usage: Fuckin’ liberal In case you’re the one person who hasn’t seen the trailer for “Santa Clarita Diet.” I saw the teaser […]
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” vs “Can the Circle Be Unbroken (By and By).”
I was writing the beginning of the ending of the fifth first book when, before I realized it, I had been singing Will the Circle Be Unbroken? for over an hour. Hell, maybe a day? Week? It just crept up on me as I’ve been thinking through where I was going with this story. Well, […]