Twenty years ago, I drove from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania to pick up my girlfriend, a recent college graduate. On the drive back, I proposed to her in Oklahoma (she said yes). We kept driving west. We arrived in Portland on July the 4th. I sort of registered the significance back then, but we hit the ground running since we didn’t …
Welcome back to my blog! Today, I wanted to discuss film reviews. Many of the films I’m going to discuss are violent, but I’ll rarely highlight the violent or bloody scenes. I’m going to write about the quieter scenes. The quieter scenes in violent films can seem mundane but they’re actually sinister. A couple are always mentioned in the same …
I’ve had many blogs over the years. Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr, my own domain … I had a blog on each one. When I founded my business, I thought it would be better to have content writing topics at Enlighten Writing, and other topics on a different blog. I joined the Rainmaker platform and then Medium.com for awhile. Neither situation worked …
You Were Never Lovelier came on Turner Classic Movies some time ago. I’ve always thought Rita Hayworth was stunning, but I’ve seen far too few of her films (I know). I hadn’t realized what a gifted dancer she was, or her deft comic timing. Before the Age of the Internet, I would have looked up the film in Leonard Maltin’s …
The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi, is many things: a caper, a hard science fiction thriller, an action-adventure story, a cops and robbers tale, and a post-cyberpunk yarn. The novel came out several years ago (with two sequels to date), but I recently read it and was compelled to review it. The rest of my review is below the jump. …
Well so much for my plans to blog every day during NaNoWriMo … or even to write an “end of NaNoWriMo 2015” post. I wrote each day during November, and I “won” NaNoWriMo by reaching 50,000 words total on November 30. Now that the white-hot streak of writing every day is long over, I find that many of the details …
Yesterday was good; today was tougher. Yesterday, I wrote early in the morning, had lunch with my Mom, and then went straight to work on a project for a longstanding client. My leg pain revealed itself as just a cramp (though a persistent one); I haven’t been able to power walk yet, but I’ll be all right. Today, our “middle-aged” …
I’ve attempted National Novel Writing Month (NanoWriMo) a couple of times in the past (once unofficially), but I’m going all out this year. I normally dislike talking about word counts and “the writing process.” It’s just not me. But I figure if I’m going to blog about NaNo, I might as well go all the way! The last few days …
We’re all drafts. Our lives are spent making notes on the backs of hands, in files, or on scraps of paper, musing on half-finished ideas, starting and abandoning projects, and constantly revising what we do finish. I like to be busy, I like to listen, and I love telling stories. These desires, for a long time, have been mutually exclusive. …
I like inventing futures. It’s fun to think of what humans will be like a thousand years from now. There are the “macro” factors, like economics, sexuality, art, politics, and starships (of course). But part of the fun is also thinking of the minutiae. Will we still drink coffee in the year 3000? Will schools and learning be drastically different? …
It seems like a social media rite of passage to write about quitting Facebook. Many hate its privacy (or anti-privacy) policies. Then there’s the company’s brazen admittance that it messed with its users emotions. I get it. I’m not a fan (friend?), either. I’ve deactivated my account before, and I haven’t had the mobile app in years. But I still …
