Newsletter 033 – February 24, 2023 Hi, In the last newsletter I talked about applying for a writing residency in Cove Park, Scotland. I didn’t get it, so I won’t be heading off to the UK this year. I first heard about the residency about a week before the application was due. In my haste …
Newsletter 025 – October 28th, 2022 Hi, About the image above: I’m going to start using it for the newsletter header. It occurred to me while I was writing the last few newsletters that I was spending more time rooting through old images from my travels than I was writing the newsletter (in order to …
Newsletter 012 – April 8th, 2022 Hi, [name] About the image above: In the center you can see a few wind turbines. Texas has over 150 wind farms, and produces more wind power than any other US state. If Texas was a country, it would be the fifth largest wind energy producer in the world. …
Newsletter 011 – March 25th, 2022 Hi, About the image above: The Hawthorn’s Sting is a mystery-thriller, and the first scene takes place in Ilfracombe, a town on the Southwest Coast of England. The novel’s current status is what most writers refer to as a work in progress. It’s partially written, an incomplete first draft …
Newsletter 010 – March 11th, 2022 Hi, About the image above: Edgartown is located on the northeastern shore of Martha’s Vineyard. If you were driving toward Edgartown from somewhere else on the island, the locals would say you were going down-island. A quick, unscientific glance on Google Earth indicated that Edgartown is roughly 14 feet …
[This is the first of a series of newsletters I’m sending to my mailing list. The date below was the date it was sent out. I’ll archive them here on the blog a week after they are delivered to my subscribers.] Newsletter 001, October 22, 2021 Hi— About the image above: In the late 1990’s, …
On June 25th I posted “Coffee and the Writer,” a few observations about my penchant for having a warm beverage nearby while I write. A few days ago I ran across a note I emailed to myself from Baltimore in November 2002. It was about a coffee incident I encountered at SC2002 (the Supercomputing Conference …
Let me preface this by saying I usually drink between 60 and 80 ounces of coffee every day. I’ll explain (further down the page) why that might not be as much at it seems. I’m not going to spend any time on the history of coffee and/or its connection to writers. Just Google “coffee and …
Throughout the centuries, left-handers have been maligned, and often forced into right-handedness (especially as concerns, but not limited to, their handwriting). I’m left-handed, and at a very early age I became convinced that the deck was stacked against me. When we were first learning to write cursive in school, my teacher tried to make me …
This is a question I’ve often asked myself, and I would imagine most writers who have looked seriously at their craft have also wondered, “Do I have what it takes?” I’m going to hand the microphone (metaphorically) over to one of the most successful screenwriters of all time, Terry Rossio. He wrote, co-wrote, or headed …