Fiction, Writing, Articles, Essays, Reviews.
The Greek philosopher Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I was drawn to this quote and its meaning when writing FLIGHT RISK. In the novel, successful, happily married man and devoted father Robert Besch is traveling for business when he survives a deadly plane crash. He manages to rescue fellow passengers from the burning plane, but suffers a rare dissociative fugue...
I’m not the only writer in the family. My daughter, Julia Klein, has a bachelor’s degree in Nutrition Science and is working on her master’s degree in Applied Nutrition to become a registered dietitian. She contributed this guest post, just in time for the holidays. It’s the holiday season, which for some of us means increased anxiety around food. Holiday celebrations are often...
Like everyone else, I’ve been impacted by Covid, although I haven’t had it yet (that I know of). And like every other writer, I’ve had a fair amount to say about Covid. At one point I was wondering why characters in a novel I was working on weren’t socially distancing or masking. I waffled on whether to include a crowded cocktail party scene—even though the novel takes place before the pandemic...
Black coffee wisping steam and a task list on my mind for the day. I’m hoping for a good one, with stretches of purpose and productivity, because I hate to admit yesterday scored low on the getting-things-done meter. Last night’s sleep: less than satisfactory but could have been worse. I’m here, I’ve shown up early. That alone is a check on the list. I nonchalantly part the curtain and almost...
I have a friend and colleague who recently wrote a blog post in which he admitted he wasn’t a confident person, and that self-doubt was always present in him. I was completely taken aback by his admission. Some people wear their self-doubt on their sleeves. They’re indecisive, or when they do make a decision are often consumed with a sense of buyer’s remorse that they’d made the wrong choice. Or...
Louise Erdrich is one of the most admired American authors and arguably the Queen of Native American Literature. I was awed back in 1984 by her debut novel, LOVE MEDICINE. It was my introduction to a novel in stories, without a central plot. Over the years, I’ve read a few of her other novels, and as good as they were, none of them made the same impression on me. Nothing like the first kiss, as...
Someone close to me was telling me he was a failure. He was bemoaning mistakes he’s made, wrong things he’s said, goals he’s fallen short of reaching. It was painful to hear him talking this way, but probably not as painful as it was for him to voice these feelings. If you have a narrative running through your head that is constantly berating you, if you feel like a loser, if you’ve been hurt...
Today is the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the day that officially drew the United States into World War II, what President Franklin Roosevelt called “a date that will live in infamy.” There was a news story today on the Bidens visiting the World War II memorial in Washington. Profiles on a few remaining survivors. Articles about that day in history. And...
Thanks to Julia enlightening me, I now know what it means to be a highly sensitive person. At first, the phrase “highly sensitive” carried negative connotations for me. I remember my mother once told me during my ornery teenage years I was too sensitive, likely in relation to my taking quick and excessive offense to a perceived slight or critical comment. That’s just being thin-skinned, which is...
This is the time of year when media outlets that review books come out with their best-of-the-year lists. I compared the top ten books of 2021 as determined by the editors at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Amazon. What’s clear to me is there is very little consensus on what the top ten books are, which is not surprising for a number of reasons. First, there...
I’ve always been a dreamer. Yes, the person who has (had) moonshot aspirations, but I’m talking about being a nighttime dreamer when my unconscious goes into rogue storytelling mode. Every. Single. Night. As a kid, I had recurring nightmares. As an adult, my dreams are invariably unsettling. There aren’t too many picnics and butterflies in my dreams. Since we all dream, you would think...
Alize slipped into a crevice between two boulders and shimmied to the top of the taller one. She sat cross-legged on her perch, raised her binoculars, and glassed the length of the pipeline, from north to south and back north again, then adjusted her viewing angle and scanned the western exposure beyond the pipeline into the dry, beige distance: washed-out rock and baked earth and sagebrush, long...
The other day I went for a run (some walking) at a trail network in town called Normanskill Ravine. True to its name, the single-track trail is steep. It doesn’t just go down into one ravine, but leads through a series of drops and climbs and switchbacks that lead you to the Normanskill, where you run flat along the creek for a while before looping back through long ascents and descents. Three...
“It was a pleasure to burn.” So thought Montag, the protagonist of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451,” as he hosed kerosene onto a burning pile of books. Montag has good company in contemporary America. Two members of a Virginia school board recently called for a book burning of “sexually explicit” books. A school board member in Florida demanded that someone must be...
I’ve been in a philosophical mood recently, at times contemplating the meaning of life, and therefore have supplemented my usual reading of fiction with two books atypical for me: David Benatar’s THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT and Victor E. Frankl’s MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING. Both books operate from the premise that life is inherently meaningless, that there is no cosmic purpose to our lives, and the...
We’re practicing in the park across from the Zoo in the big meadow next to the golf course. Our Coach, Duke Donovan, has us run tackling drills over mud puddles. He blows his whistle and says huddle up men. It’s either a dirty joke or three laps for the fumble on the last play. We circle around, 11- and 12-year-olds of the St. Mark’s Lions 90-pound football team. He’s probably 30, younger than...
I’ve been a father who doesn’t take his heart condition seriously but instead focuses on preventing his daughter from marrying a man he doesn’t approve of. I’ve been his daughter, a recent college graduate who meets the wrong kind of guy and slides into drug and alcohol abuse. I’ve been that wrong kind of guy who isn’t an awful person but will manipulate others to achieve his goals. I’ve been a...
How do you discover the next book to read? For me, I look at my to-be-read pile teetering on the edge of my desk or my written list and choose from there, but the pile and list have origin stories as well. I read the New York Times Book Review every Sunday and receive the NYT Book Briefing newsletter and newsletters from several bookstores. Fellow readers who I trust make recommendations...
You asked me how I decided to become a creative writer. The four of us were sitting outside finishing our lunch, the chill creeping in, and your question caught me by surprise. It shouldn’t have, since I’m sure you’re in the throes of deciding what to do next with your life and it makes sense to ask others how they decided about theirs. Although I’ve been asked this question often enough, I...
Just the kind of day you want for a run, in the woods, by the stream, past peak, sun doing its trick slanting through the trees. Fallen leaves conceal roots and ruts on the trail and other spots are muddy and slick, and I have to pay attention more than usual, focus where my foot will land and the trail will bend, that’s called being in the moment, said to be good for you, and I don’t fall, this...
