Fiction, Writing, Articles, Essays, Reviews.
I managed to get my hands on an advance reader copy (ARC) of AMERICAN DIRT, by Jeanine Cummins, a novel that has received a lot of hype and seems destined to become a best seller based on early reviews and reader enthusiasm. Plenty of five-star ratings on Goodreads. Don Winslow calling it a GRAPES OF WRATH for our times. The novel is a story of chase and escape. Lydia and her eight-year-old son...
I seldom write about a novel I’m writing. That’s too meta for me. I rarely talk to others about my work in progress–I end up contradicting myself and sounding confused. It’s usually best if I let my writing do the talking for me. Today is the exception. Work-in-progress is a novel called (for now) THE SUITOR. The story centers on three characters: recent college-grad and...
Someone left this memoir in my Little Free Library and I snatched it up because the title included the word ‘tennis’. I like tennis. I play, I watch, I read about it. This compassionate and thoughtful book is not about tennis. It’s about a friendship between two men: Adam Verghese, a physician whose marriage has fallen apart, and David Smith, a medical student recovering from...
The dictum says the book is always better than the movie. Consider: you read a great novel, get absorbed in the fictional world, accompany the characters on their journeys. Your imagination creates every face, pictures every scene. You lose yourself for pages and pages. You loved the book. You hate the movie. Or, at best, the movie is okay. They did a pretty good job repurposing this incredible...
A perfect autumn day for the library. Harriet gave me the idea to sponsor a Little Free Library. She seems to know when I need a project to focus on, and this one fit me well: I’m an author, an avid reader, and we have many full bookshelves in our house—books as furniture, we call that. I have just enough skill and an assortment of tools to believe I could design and build my own library rather...
A favorite place of mine is the Five Rivers Environmental Center just down the road from where I live. When the kids were young we would hike the many trails, catch frogs in the streams, and visit the educational center. When by myself now, I run on the trail network, chasing deer and getting chased by Canada geese. There’s one spot I always visit. A small sign with an arrow points from the...
In Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, the wealthy Park family collides with the poor but street-smart Kim family, causing . . . a movie like nothing I’ve ever seen. Sure, it’s a social issue film addressing the enormous gulf between the haves and have nots. But it’s also a black comedy, thriller, farce, tragedy, and domestic drama. Add it all up and you get Art House. The storyline, the filming, the...
When I’m working on a novel or a story, I’m always unsettled until I decide upon the title. Before that, the narrative seems unfocused and lacks direction. I’m not fully in control or sure what I’m writing about. Not that finding the title solves those other writing issues–far from it. But the right title is essential. A strong title has a way of clarifying the story...
Maybe it’s time for bookstores to devote shelf space to a growing genre: Autofiction. As the name implies, autofiction is autobiographical fiction, starring the author, often written in the first-person point of view. There are many examples: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s epic account of his life, “My Struggle.” Rachel Kusk’s triology whose protagonist is a novelist. Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick...
One advantage of living near colleges and universities is that innovative galleries such as the Opalka Gallery at Sage College host Pecha Kucha nights. Pecha Kucha is a unique presentation format: you get 20 slides, each slide stays on screen for 20 seconds and then automatically advances to the next. You get exactly 6:40 to present (20 slides x 20 sec/per = 400 seconds = 6 minutes 40 seconds)...
FOOD TRUCK David Klein None of us mentioned the food truck. Too much else required our attention. We had urgent stories to post about the seven confirmed dead and the eleven still missing. We had reports to write about the remnants of the hurricane that dumped six inches of rain in less than twenty–four hours and lifted the rivers and streams to record levels causing the Schoharie Creek in Fort...
I recently visited Art Omi, a sculpture and architecture park in Columbia County. We were able to ride bikes through the 120-acre park, on dirt paths and grassy slopes, stopping near each installation. The art was original and thought-provoking, the early autumn weather warm and colorful. I’ve got family with me. It’s one of those days you’re just lucky to have. Near the end of...
Clichés are worn out, overused expressions that often express a popular or common idea. We all know them and understand their meanings. Therefore, it’s easy to reach for clichés when writing or speaking. “Light as a feather.” “Blind as a bat.” But as writers, we must purge clichés from our work. George Orwell once said, “Never use a metaphor, simile or figure of speech which you are used to...
El Camino offers a tremendously entertaining farewell to the Breaking Bad series. Punctuated by outstanding performances of Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman) and Jesse Plemons (Todd), the film is sure to satisfy fans of the series—who will likely be the only ones to watch it, or at least “get” it. The movie picks up right where the series left off, with Jesse escaping in Todd’s El Camino from the...
They come from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Myanmar. From Nigeria and Yemen and the Congo. Venezuela and Columbia. They are refugees and immigrants. They are in the United States because they have been lucky enough to escape a previous and often dangerous life to start a new and hopefully better life. For hours every day, they work on their English skills so they can learn to shop, communicate...
October 17, 1989. Some dates you never forget. I was living in Santa Cruz, CA when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck. The world shook. My world shook. Ironically, at the moment the earthquake began, 5:07 pm, I was helping move my ex-girlfriend into a new apartment because we had broken up after living together for four years. It was a devastating moment. We ran out into the driveway. I member...
I’ve been thinking a lot about artistic expression and its relationship to public recognition. A primary reason I write is to express myself. Whether I’m writing a novel or a journal entry, I’m trying to say something. Its meaning isn’t always clear to me, especially in the beginning, but eventually, through writing, I get there. It’s enormously satisfying to finish a piece of writing and feel...
See that photo? Those are all the drafts and notecards and spreadsheets–the mountain of writing and writing tools that finally led to that much smaller final product: my novel, STASH. In all my novels, I’ve rewritten scenes dozens of times. I’ve revised every sentence. I’ve drastically altered plots. Hatched and killed subplots. My characters: their motivations change...
The definition of whistleblower in the Miriam-Webster Dictionary is: one who reveals something covert or who informs against another. Within that definition, there is nothing that implies ethics, courage or morality on the part of the whistleblower. There is nothing that puts a positive spin on the complex act of whistleblowing, that recognizes the whistleblower is attempting to expose wrongdoing...
I just read a New York Times news lead that President Trump said whoever provided information to the Ukraine whistleblower was a spy and guilty of treason. And, coincidentally or not, last night I saw “Official Secrets,” a whistleblower thriller starring the magnetic and convincing Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun, a true-story British Intelligence staffer who blew the whistle about...
