Dog Ear
October 4, 2012
I was driving home after dropping Ark off at the library. Two lane road, and over on the opposite side, riding against the flow, a cyclist on a yellow bike. No gearing, upright stance, big retro fenders. No real branding or effort to conform to “road” or “mountain”. A K-mart bike. And the rider, a guy with flip flops, a ball cap, no gloves, in street shorts and a shirt. And, as mentioned, he’s on the wrong side of the road. A casual cyclist. To the right side, the Hideaway bar. I’m looking at him, placing him as just the […]
September 27, 2012
(This was orignally supposed to run on Sept 20th but I wanted to touch on the movie The Words. Wonder if my life is better in the future…) There is the common thought that a writer is only a writer if he is a suffering writer. If you have a big house and kids and everything paid for, you aren’t wired to angst and can’t capture human existence. And that might be true – certainly people who know the crush of personal loss or the humiliations of modern society can ‘write what they know’. But sometimes it comes in so […]
September 20, 2012
I haven’t done a movie review for nearly a year (when I revamped the site, I dropped the movie section). But when I saw the movie The Words, I knew I had to touch on it. See, it’s a writer’s movie (don’t think that Finding Forrester was – that was a piece of shit). The Words is about a young writer (don’t we all know him) who is accepting an award for his critical success, living the life we all dream (don’t we look so clever? Isn’t our limo sooooo long?). As he and his gorgeous wife come out of […]
September 13, 2012
I was downtown with the Missus watching the play Billy Bishop goes to War. It’s a fun performance, a one-man show which follows the exploits of Billy Bishop, a top-ranked fighter ace from World War One. Oddly, I’d seen it thirty years ago and suddenly it had popped up again at the local playhouse. After the show, the performers (all two of them (okay, a one-man show, with a second guy on the piano)) sat down and fielded questions from the audience, a nice intimate Q&A. Someone in the audience asked Timothy Williams how he did all the characters (different […]
September 6, 2012
Way back when I was finalizing Early Retyrement for publication, someone in my family (who will remain nameless) sent me information concerning an author’s exchange, a deal where you’d send your book to someone in exchange for their’s, and the understanding was that you’ve give it no less that four stars on Amazon. Yes, it was one of those I-rub-your-back-ditto deals. Ugh. I remember thinking at the time what a perfectly nauseating business practice it was. And then, recently on Facebook, a fellow writer noted a service where you’d pay $1000 or more and get 50 reviews, all glowing and […]
August 30, 2012
Those who check out my bike blog might remember the injury I dealt myself trying to save the planet (and a little rental car cash) HERE. Ended up at a doc-in-the-box, getting pills prescribed for the pain. Looked on the label and saw that they were sedatives that might make me, well, sedate. The first day, I learned the power of the word ‘might’. I hung on my desk for about three hours before limping home to crash into bed. So tired. The day following, I took my pills like a good little boy and went to work. All morning […]
August 21, 2012
I’ve heard tell that one of the drives for Steven King’s novel Misery came from his reaction to fans stealing bat statues off the tops of his gateposts. I don’t know if it’s true, but it should be. We all dream of adoring fans popping up at opportune moments to gush about how great we are. I’ve had that happen exactly once (when a person at a train event, realizing who I was, went delightfully ga-ga about Fire and Bronze). Very, very nice. But what we don’t think about are the over-cooked fans, the ones who haunt us, pester us, […]
August 14, 2012
Just had an eye-opening (and speech-busting) moment in my Dale Carnegie course this week. The speech was to be done with enthusiasm, addressing an earlier goal. Well, MY goal for this task was redoing my agency-pitch cover letter. See, I had the idea that I needed a cover letter for every occasion, an actual stable of them on hand, maintained and ready (see Augean stables). And it worked well. So now I had to report. Enthusiastically. About cover letters. Tricky. So I figured that, rather than describe the monotone tasks actually associated with this effort, I’d give them a slam-bang […]
August 7, 2012
I told this story a while ago, but for those who came in late, here’s the short version. Was at a book club speaking about Early ReTyrement. The questions were fun; how come I was so clever? How come I was so smart? And then came the question: Isn’t Dion’s The Wanderer a copyrighted musical work? How my heart chilled at that. Was it? I didn’t know. You can see how I used it HERE – it’s rather a critical component of my first chapter, the moment that tells us that this is a time travel book and a humorous […]
August 2, 2012
Retelling a story, especially a classic, is always dangerous business. Movies are generally updated (“reimagined” as Hollywood suits refer to it) to suit newer (i.e. duller) audiences. As for books, its generally not done. The major exception to this are those “zombies” and “robot” editions of classics, but that is, of course, simply a parody (and a rather stupid one at that). Normally I focus on written storytelling, but this weekend I had a curious episode of visual storytelling (i.e. a movie) that had been updated for a modern audience. It was none other than Space Battleship Yamato, based on […]