Totally insane month with a lot of legal reading—maybe 500 pages—which I find fascinating, but you won’t. I added Grisham’s latest to that, but it’s emotionally cold and didn’t have much of an impact on me. Okay, yes, all of Grisham is emotionally cold, but usually that suits the story. It didn’t here. I enjoyed […]
Continue ReadingIt’s been an interesting reading month. I started reading a book on West Side Story, which looked truly interesting. It was unbelievably boring, but I finished it anyway. I’m not usually that completist. I think it simply points out how tired I am and how unwilling I was to look for something new. I read […]
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I was reading the May, 2021 issue of Entertainment Weekly (the most poorly named magazine since it switched to monthly) and came across a quote from the actor Daniel Dae Kim in an article on Asian-American entertainers, the Asian hate going on in this country, and the lack of representation. Kim said, “I think it’s […]
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One of my routes on my morning runs each week takes me past a small independent high-end movie theater, privately owned. It has a full restaurant, a beautiful bar, a space that can be rented for civic events, and six small theaters with extremely comfortable chairs. In the Before times, as one reporter likes to […]
Continue ReadingI had a quieter December than I expected, which is just lovely. Lots of time to read. But, since I had a lot of reading to do, that was perfect. And wonderful. I flailed around a bit with my holiday reading. I wasn’t in that romantic a mood. I wanted holiday mysteries which proved harder […]
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We’ve been deep in the licensing business for six weeks now (more if you follow me on Patreon), and it’s time to take a different perspective for the next two weeks or so. We’ll be diving deeper into licensing and the things we need to do for licensing—going back into the weeds, as it were, […]
Continue ReadingI’m starting this at the beginning of the month, but I can already tell this will be a spare version of the list. I’m reading 1.3 million words of fiction this month, since I didn’t have time to start last month for the Anthology workshop which starts (started) on March 1. So the bulk of […]
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This is my final post in the series, because otherwise I’ll be spending the rest of my life reviewing 2018 and looking toward 2019—while 2019 is passing me by. 2018 marked the crossover moment in the disruption in publishing where we firmly left the old model and accept the new model as normal. Old industries […]
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I write books set in the 1960s, a time of such generational upheaval that it makes the changes happening now seem tame. Maybe the research for those books (and my memories of the time) have given me more perspective than I should have at 58. Or maybe, it was in the study of history that […]
Continue ReadingAlas and alack, October did not start well. The traditionally published novel I read first was disappointing. Sadly, it wasn’t the author’s fault. Her stupid traditional publisher ruined everything. Let me explain without naming the book. The book had three reversal/surprises built into the narrative. The first, nearly halfway through, is that a character we […]
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