Stories of Suspense with a Sense of Humor
One of the Homeric tales in my family, retold at gatherings with my brothers, is called The Epiphany on the Big Dipper. Here is that tale… From the late 1960s to the mid 1970s, my family made an annual visit to Geauga Lake, an amusement park in Ohio. One of my older brothers was taken … Read more
I was in Brooklyn, New York the other day and walked my kid’s dog to the bodega to get a sandwich. If you’re not familiar, a bodega is a corner convenience store/delicatessen crammed into the smallest space imaginable. They offer one of everything in a hallway-sized store and stay open all night. They’re one of … Read more
I’m writing you from Brooklyn, New York, where I’m visiting my kid. Things are strange here compared to the suburbs of Lansing, but the basics still work fine. Smile at someone’s dog as they walk by and you get a smile back, either from the dog or the walker. Say hello and they’ll smile and … Read more
A new book is making the rounds of popularity in the circles where I hang out (Twitter and Substack) as writer after writer proclaims the book’s awesomeness. It’s Slow Productivity by Cal Newport, and I’m never going to read it. It’s not that I think the book is a bunch of hooey. On the contrary, … Read more
When I first decided to become a writer, at the age of 17, I suffered from Dunning-Kruger Effect about writing. If you’re not familiar, Dunning-Kruger means your ignorant about, or bad at, something, but you think you’re excellent at it. It’s a cognitive bias that twists your self-assessment about a thing. I was ignorant about … Read more