The first few weeks on any job can be trying. There’s so much to learn about the company, the product and your role/team. For an introverted agoraphobe like me, there’s all the stress of meeting new people and orienting myself to the culture of the place. It can be overwhelming, no doubt. At this moment
There is just the hint of autumn on the air this week. It is different here in California from the autumns I remember as a kid. Back then, this time of year brought the smell of dry leaves and apple cider, the cool temperatures that kissed the grass with frost in the early mornings and
Anniversaries can be hard. A twentieth anniversary after nearly two years of worldwide sorrow and loss is going to be hard. Some of us can not look away from the images and footage. Some of us can’t bear to see it again. Some of us fall somewhere in the middle of that. Please be kind
Some days, when I sit down to write, my mind goes blank. Other days my fingers can’t type fast enough to get everything in my head down on paper/screen. Some days words flow freely and they express things beautifully. Other days it’s more like slogging through mud. This last week or so there has been
So, where do the stories come from? What makes a good story? Or…what makes a story good? As with all art, it is up to the Reader to decide whether a story is good or not, and for many they can’t tell you why they feel that way. Some of us like to read dark,
I get asked fairly often how it is that I do what I do. For a long time I didn’t realize that not everyone has an endless loop of stories in their heads or characters that pull up a chair to have a chat. It seems inconceivable to me and I know that in those
As a new writer, one of the hang ups I had was tending to slip between past tense and present, particularly when I was writing action. There’s just something more intense about action in the present tense. It was an accident that I would sometimes catch, and sometimes not. I still do one thorough reading
As a reader, one of the things that can kick me out of a story or make me put a book down is what I call “point of view slips”. You know, you’re reading along in one point of view and there’s that random sentence/paragraph that is written in a completely different point of view.
I know I’m in a minority when I say that I love the number thirteen and even more so when it falls on a Friday. We might say it stems from the fact that I was born on a Friday the 13th. It was September, 1968. My parents were in Florida while my father was
On Thursday, I got on a plane for the first time in almost 2 years. I flew from Oakland to Austin on Southwest. To accomplish this, I had to walk a half mile to the BART station, take two BART trains to get to the airport, check in, get through security, get on a plane,
