Fiction, Writing, Articles, Essays, Reviews.
You might have heard that a principal of a Florida school is out of a job after sixth-grade students were shown (exposed to?) an image of Michelangelo’s statue of David in a Renaissance art class. Some parents complained they hadn’t been notified that an image of the statue would be shown in the classroom. They hadn’t realized their children would be subject to “pornography.” Because if you look...
One of the benefits of living where I do is that the New York State Writer’s Institute is located here. Last night I got to see the acclaimed novelist Jennifer Egan, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for A Visit From the Good Squad (my review), and was here to talk about her most recent novel, The Candy House (my review). Goon Squad has a secure place on the list of “The Most Important Novels in...
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, Google’s Bard—there’s an arms race going on in the artificial intelligence (AI) world, and I’m beginning to see why. These tools pack power. A while ago, I tried an AI tool called Rytr to create a blog post about how to write and publish a novel. The results were informative but obvious, a little dull, and a bit repetitive. Since then, I’ve been toying...
Sometimes I read a passage that strikes so close to me that it answers the question: Why do I read? In the novel, Trust, by Hernan Diaz, a young woman, Helen, walks from a European villa where she is staying into a nearby town, 1920s: The dry echo of her shoes on the cobblestones was all she could hear in the empty streets. Every few steps, she gently dragged a foot, just to feel the skin on her...
I’m not one to gravitate toward a television series based on a video game, but I’ve looked over Owen’s shoulder a few times while he played “The Last of Us,” got absorbed in that story world, and then became interested in checking out the HBO series by the same time. I’m glad I did. Set in a post-apocalyptic world mostly destroyed by zombie-like humans who have been infected with a...
About a year ago I noticed a car with a logo I didn’t recognize. Could there be a new car company making a push into this competitive industry? Then I discovered it was a rebrand for the Korean car company Kia. I, along with many others, didn’t see the word Kia in the new logo. After doing a little research, I discovered that at least 30,000 people a month search for the “KN car.” People think...
I came across an opinion piece in the NYT by the writer Tim Urban that had a good news/bad news structure to it. The bad news was called Depressing Math. It means we don’t have nearly the amount of time we think we have to do what we love. The example he used that hit closest to home for me was about spending time with his parents. He wrote: I grew up spending some time with my parents almost...
When I see the list of films that have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture this year, I’m dismayed. I’ve seen about half of them. They were decent, but none of them stood out to me as worthy of great honors. I believe the feature film as a storytelling device is in steep decline, replaced by the limited or recurring series streaming or on cable television. But I still love going...
I was born on Christmas, December 25. My brother, Peter, three years older than me, was also born on Christmas. So right from the start I’m sharing my birthday with both my brother AND baby Jesus. If that wasn’t enough to dilute my birthday, Christmas was a big deal in my family. There was the tree to acquire, the Advent calendar to hang, the decorations to bring out. Every Christmas Eve we’d...
This post contains graphic visual content. We noticed the telltale black droppings under the lazy susan cabinet. Then when I was down in my old basement office where I still keep the printer, I spotted a mouse skittering along the heating pipe. Julia and Owen both reported sightings in their rooms. Never before had the second-floor bedrooms been breached. This was an outrage and an emergency call...
My next novel, IN FLIGHT, is about a business executive and family man who attempts to put his life back together after surviving a plane crash but also having suffered a trauma-induced dissociative mental state. It will be published this spring (and I’ll be sure to incessantly remind you). If you haven’t read the first chapter about Robert yet, click right here. The story details his marriage...
I was fortunate to get away for a long weekend to Florida with Harriet to visit her mom in Sarasota. There are benefits to sunshine and warm temps. There is joy in biking, tennis, swimming, walking on the beach, and seeing loved ones. There is calm in putting aside work and responsibilities for a few days. But about Florida, I’m conflicted. Beautiful beaches—yes. Fine weather—for the winter...
It’s nearing the tenth anniversary of my father’s death, and I keep thinking about something that happened in the last year of his life. I was involved, and I’ll never know if I did the right thing. At that time, Bob had been diagnosed but was still capable of living independently. My sister and I both lived in town and were keeping a close watch on him, checking in every day, knowing at some...
What is it about skating on a frozen pond that makes me feel poetic? There was “Skating on a Winter Night” a few years ago with Owen and my friends when we had sticks and pucks. And then there was this past weekend on Black Creek Marsh. We had to hike a snowy trail down to the windswept ice and we tested its thickness, walking out on the surface, gingerly, one step and then another...
I’m a generation too far removed to have embraced video games. The extent of my game knowledge comes from occasionally looking over Owen’s shoulder to see what’s on the screen and asking questions about the characters and game objectives. Then I picked up the bestselling novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin. This easy-to-read and well-crafted story centers on Sadie and...
I didn’t tell you what happened on my winter hike the other day. How when you’re fatigued and disoriented, your mind can play tricks. Earlier, when starting out, I was tuned to the environment. The trails were marked with colored disks, and the surface was packed snow and ice. I breathed in the cold air, the freshness of the outdoors. I took in the trail and bare trees and snowy terrain, the...
It doesn’t happen often enough but when the sun comes out during the winter, I’m compelled to have its rays upon me. The bare trees cooperate by letting more of the light land on me. Bennett Hill is just fifteen minutes from my house and a favorite hike because of its well-marked trails, a dose of steepness, and its winter landscape of gray and white and brown. Bare trees cast long...
You might have heard that artificial intelligence (AI) is taking over the world. Or my world, anyway. There are now dozens of AI tools that will write for you. Writing may be my profession and my passion, but if AI can write better than I can, I may be looking for a new line of work. The AI I tried is called Rytr. I think that word is pronounced “Writer.” Very clever. I had to do some...
Not to be mean-hearted to the grieving or entirely self-serving, but I’ve discovered an upside when I hear about artists’ deaths. Recently, the American novelist Russell Banks died. Some years back I read one of his novels, The Sweet Hereafter, and found it compelling and intelligent. When I heard of his death, I remembered that his novel, Affliction, was sitting on my bookshelf. I don’t...
This is what’s known as a teaser: I show you the cover of my next book and let you read an excerpt to get you excited about purchasing the novel when it’s published in the very near future.
Below is the cover. Here is the first chapter. Enjoy!
