Fight the power — Like most of you here, I’m just a poor writer. Wait, that sounded wrong. I am a full-time writer, and thus always on the verge of financial collapse. Yeah, that sounds better. Anyway, before making the leap to writing full-time, I wrote part-time while working in retail hell, my 20-year…

And the day had started out so normal — For reasons I don’t need to delve into here, I found myself in a pawn shop just south of Fort Worth this morning. Actually, I’ll tell you why, so it doesn’t vex you for the remainder of the story: I am a full-time writer and it’s the beginning of the…

Facing tough questions presented to us by technology — Is it wrong for someone to generate AI art and try to profit from it? If so, why? And says who? How about writers using AI to assist with their writing? When does help and assistance turn into doing most of the writing? Where is that line? And who draws…

Technology is making phone cons more convincing —learn to recognize the signs — My ex-wife C was over at the house, temporarily relieving me as the adult in charge of watching our son play online games. She’d just arrived when she got a phone call. “No. No. Definitely not. That wasn’t me.” As someone who’s had my identity stolen twice — I’ve since…

He’s all over the place — In recent months, Pope Francis has been more in the news for various health issues than anything else, which isn’t a surprise for someone who is 86 years old and has been missing part of a lung since he was a teen. Being an octogenarian is no walk in the…

Contagion — Dear Woman who is always quoting your husband like he’s a one-man Think Tank, Why do you do that? I don’t care what your husband thinks. If he were a meme, I’d keep scrolling and searching for something funnier or more enlightened. Nothing personal, but I didn’t marry him. I…

I’m not a hanger outer — I’ve got this affliction. I look like I’m fun to hang out with, but I don’t want to hang out. So when people ask me to hang out, I panic. I say a bunch of weird things, like, “You should join a gym” or “Have you tried knitting?” Sending people…

Football and censorship — It took one day. One. The day after I finally wrote a positive story about my home state, the Lone Star gods laughed and punched me square in the face. Twice. Watching the news yesterday (something I definitely should stop doing), amid the indictments of former presidents, the heatwave, and…

How literature and history help us understand — So this all could be my pain meds talking, but I don’t think so. Perhaps you’ve read British novelist E.M. Forster’s classic Howards End. I was thinking of it this morning, especially the scene in which Mrs. Wilcox (formerly Miss Howard) writes her dying request that her ancestral home, Howards…