It took two years to clean out my mother’s house. Stacks and stacks of boxes – closets and attics full. See, Mom was bad with paper and mementoes, but especially pictures. Out of focus, duplicates, the backs of people’s heads, those weird double frames you used to get at the end of a roll of …
I was trained to be an artistic snob, and as Jimmy Stewart would say, I was a very apt pupil. The prevailing attitude in my college theater program — or to do them justice, the attitude I was most primed and receptive for — was that commercial entertainment might be a way to pay …
“So, what brings you here today?” asks the doctor. “Well, I asked my G.P. about getting assessed for Adult ADHD, and she referred me to you.” “And what makes you think you might have ADHD?” “Well, I was reading an article — wait, that’s not the right place to start. My mom died about six …
For a while now, folks have been asking me “How’s the new book going?” Seems like it’s time for a real update. The first draft of “Mister Mottley and the Dying Fall” was my NaNoWriMo project last year, and it was a great learning experience. I learned, for example: The “fast draft” approach is …
[View the story “This week’s #1lineWed – Dialogue” on Storify]
This week I received a fantastic opportunity to attend the Birmingham Gun Show, sponsored by the Alabama Gun Collectors Association. With the support and assistance of one of the Association’s Directors, Brent B. Goodwin, LTC (Ret), I’ll be requesting video interviews with vintage gun collectors to enlighten me — and you — about the real …
I was working on a fantastic, thoughtful, philosophical piece on whether genre fiction is formulaic or just taps into a compelling story structure, and the inner conflict writers and artists feel over commercialism versus “pure” art. Then I realized Blues Traveler did a much better job. And they’re way cooler than me. So here you …
One of my strongest positive memories of the events around 9/11 happened the day after. I and many hundreds of others descended on our closest blood donation center. (Remember, at that time we still thought there would be lots of patients who’d need it.) The poor staff were completely over-run and had no concept of …
