Watch, Read, Listen

  • Mustangs

    I’ve never owned a Mustang, but the car keeps showing up in my life. An old flame owned one.  She also owned–at the same time, mind you–an Austin-Healy Mark 3000.  She used the Mustang for road trips but still, having a choice of sweet cars to take anywhere was doubly impressive to me; then again…

  • Taken To The Cleaners

    The linen jacket I wore to the college graduation of my son, Brian, got soaked in a memorable downpour that sent both graduates and proud parents scurrying for cover.  I left the jacket in my car afterwards, thinking I’d take it to the cleaners, but didn’t get around to doing that for a few days. …

  • Got…META?

    Thrown a best-seller across the room lately, too disgusted to even finish the book?  Or maybe you did and the best thing you can say about the stinker is that you got it from the library. What crappy writing!  Over-plotted, characters suck, lousy ending…and that deus ex machine halfway through?  Gimme a break. Say you…

  • Pass on the Cup of Dreams

      Pass on the Cup of Dreams, the third novel in the Six Kingdoms series, is now out in e-book format and print.  And it has a sidekick:  the first edition of the 55-page Six Kingdoms Codex which contains a new, introductory story plus a glossary and backround to this world of dark fantasy.  You…

  • The New Year’s Day Massacre

    We were given only two days’ notice for an all-staff meeting at 10 a.m. on New Year’s Day.  On the busy Eve, in waiters’ stations and at pass-windows, everyone had their take on this mysterious and heartlessly-timed gathering. Ten hours into the new year we walked into the restaurant–to tables devoid of place-settings, to stacks of…

  • How do you know when it’s love?

    So it’s finally done, Pass on the Cup of Dreams, the third novel in the Six Kingdoms series, which will be published in early December in e-format and as a POD book by the wonderful folks at Lucky Bat.  Or about the same time my new lucky beard will stop scratching.  As a boyhood fan of the Red Sox (I…

  • World-building

    I’ve spent this summer vacationing in the Six Kingdoms. Let others have their Nantucket, Yellowstone and Saratoga.  I’ve been where kraken rule the seas and Erseiyrs the skies; where whitewash still brightens the walls of magnificent castles; and where you can walk along timbered roads–don’t look down!–that link villages built high in the canopy of…

  • Blue Peter

    Remember that aptitude test we took early on in high school to find out what we’re good at?  Maybe the test was a help for some, but by then I had a pretty good idea of the direction I was going because of the crocodile behind the sofa. Years before, my parents surely had no idea…

  • My 1000 acres on Mars

    As if the recent Chelyabinsk meteor explosion wasn’t enough to give us a glimmer of the much larger event that wiped out the dinosaurs, now we have Stephen Hawking, the renowned astrophysicist, telling us recently that humans  won’t survive another 1000 years without escaping beyond our ‘fragile’ planet.  Or, as the prescient Tennyson urged in…

  • The Dog Park

    The Edmonds dog park is a triangular acre of sand and gravel, bounded on one side by the Burlington Northern railroad tracks, and on the other by the parking area for an adjacent waterfront park.  The only side not fenced in is the seventy-five yards of pebbly beach strewn with driftwood logs.  Clear days get…