It’s easy to fall in love with Venice. People have been doing it for many centuries. My wife and I were not unique in that regard. There are those who have even fallen in love with Venice and managed to simply go on with their lives.
But the love of Venice is a powerful idea. And great ideas dream of being made manifest. Just like those that stirred the first people who dreamed of a different life and created Venice in a place where no city belonged. …
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Johnson Outboard’s Gatsby Motorboat — beat on against any tide!
Boulangerie La Valjean Baguettes— our bread is a steal!
Don’t fear the sticker price — you’ll loath yourself if you don’t buy this Cadillac El Dorado. Perfect for Vegas road trips!
Buggin’ out about incomprehensible Metamorphosis? Orkin Pest Control’s “Samsa Package” will make your home less Kafka-esque!
Hallmark reminds you to remember the most important woman in your life this Mother’s Day with our new Oedipus Greeting Cards.
Home Depot, get it done…
Don’t Get too Comfortable in Your Comfort Zone
You are a writer. You read voraciously. You’ve studied your craft. You’ve read the books on writing. You’ve applied yourself, integrated writing into your life. Established a routine, a special time dedicated to you and your words.
Good for you. But remember that routine means the usual course of action, the customary way, the beaten path. The well-trodden route down a trail that has been marked and navigated before.
While there’s comfort in routine and powerful productivity can result from helpful habits, there’s also the possibility of complacency and even a sense…
Literary lions help you get lit…
Keep it Real by Eliminating Phonies From Your Life
Holden Caulfield
How Going Gluten-Free Changed My Life
Jean Valjean
Alternative Energy and Why We Must Attack Wind Power
Don Quixote
Jazz Up Your Entertaining by Preventing Party-Planning Disasters
Jay Gatsby
Don’t Bug Out About Every Little Thing
Gregor Samsa
A Procrastinor’s Guide: Think About it Tomorrow
Scarlett O’Hara
Get an “A” in Life by Learning Not to be Judged by Others
Hester Prynne
Top 10 Things To Do When You Would Prefer Not To
Bartleby
Deductive Reasoning Is NOT Always Elementary
Dr. Watson
Ask…
The super-secret-never-before-published reviews of my novel, Losing Venice
After celebrating being three months old, very grateful that my new novel has amassed a small constellation of four and five star reviews — but with the right telescope, maybe you can even see these in a nearby galaxy…
I LOVE THIS BOOK!
ee cummings
I laughed. I cried. Better than Cats!
T.S. Eliot
If there’s one thing I’m not uncertain about, it’s this book!
Werner Heisenberg
More lovely and more temperate than a summer’s day!
Shakespeare
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember…
Finding Your Own Escape Equation: Gaining by Getting Away
My wife and I, both American born and raised, are about to mark almost a decade living on a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea. We escaped from a life we knew to one we did not understand. From one with a seemingly sprawling geography to a smaller, more finite one.
In my many decades on planet earth, for me this is the longest I have ever lived in one place. It is also by far the smallest place, both in size and population, that I have ever lived. …
Open Mic Night Gets Lit!
Jay Gatsby — Gangsta’s Paradise, Coolio
Atticus Finch — Ebony and Ivory, Paul McCartney
Don Quixote — Dark Horse, Katy Perry
Tom Joad — Poor Poor Pitiful Me, Linda Ronstadt
Humbert Humbert — Waiting For a Girl Like You, Foreigner
Holly Golightly — Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Deep Blue Something
Jake Barnes — Why Don’t We Get Drunk & Screw, Jimmy Buffet
Elizabeth Bennet — Marry Me, Train
Romeo — I Would Die 4U, Prince
Sherlock Holmes — Looking for Clues, Robert Palmer
Holden Caulfield — You’re So Vain, Carly Simon
Gregor Samsa — Bug a…
Rumors about me being the next James Bond are greatly exaggerated
It beats The Living Daylights out of me how the rumors about me being the next James Bond even got started. Maybe it began when my doctor told me I was well enough. For now. Not immortal, exactly but that I would Die Another Day. I said, “Dr. No,” as I skimmed the prescription, running my Goldfinger down to the bottom of the page where she had messily written From Russia with Love. Dr. Russia’s undeclared affection for me hit me like a Thunderball.
I had to be careful…
Not to be “ironic” but eventually it all just became “too much.”
For much of my “adult” life I was a “professional” Air-Quote Traffic Controller. It’s a well-known fact that this is one of the most “stressful” careers in the world.
Don’t “quote” me on this, but to my mind the job was punctuated by many things: pressure, anxiety, how to use semi-colons. There was a whole list of them. Things. The truth is, you probably wouldn’t “get it” if you never experienced it.
You’d be sitting there in the tower and a student pilot would fly in “hot,” requesting…
