All of It

A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

Authors as Entrepreneurs

Here’s an ad. Do you see it? Scroll up. Three books. Each not remotely like the other. Death, Misery, & Other Curiosities: 12 Dark Short Stories Filled With Angst and Tragedy The Raging Giant Blue Goldfish: 22 Short Stories The Joro Spider Journal: The Blue Book...

Free Storytelling Event

I'll be reading/performing two stories at the Suwanee Arts Fest (Georgia) this weekend. Free. I'd love if you stopped by and introduce yourself. Suwanee Town Center at the Author's Booth. I'll have books to sell (I'm happy to sign). Both stories are adult and...

New Critique Groups Starting

I've got a new thing beginning that the writers among you might be interested in. It's a writing critique group. Essentially, it's a small group of writers offering guided critiques of each other's writing. You will learn from each other, and along the way, be...

Vanity Chat-GPT

Have you done a Chat-GPT vanity chat? What’s your take? Is it really you they are talking about? Or, maybe they've not noticed you enough? Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,vanity of vanities! All is vanity.What does man gain by all the toilat which he toils under...

Morning Reading

I often start the morning reading. In this case, an old familiar favorite. Any writer worth his salt is an active reader. This should be an obvious truth, but whenever I talk to someone who tells me they want to write well, I ask them what they are reading. If they...

America: Wheat Fields and Cigarettes

Amber waves of grain. In the United States, we have over 63 million acres of wheat planted yearly. That's almost a hundred thousand square miles, or roughly 3% of the continental United States. And attached to this acreage are farmhouses filled with people working...

National Poetry Month

This is National Poetry Month. Read poetry. Don't give it lip service. Read some. Go ahead. Now. Online. Google poetry. Or any poet you've ever heard about since birth. Or buy some online (this searches poetry on Amazon). Write a poem. Be funny. Be sad. Be sweet. Be...

Don’t Miss the Message

Don't miss the message. Otherwise, you might get bit by a snake. Where I live, it's a real warning, not merely a metaphor. I took the photo of this sign. Several other signs like this were through the park. Copperheads are the biggest, but not only threat. This isn't...

Rudy Trendl

That's my late dad, Rudy Trendl. More of a joke teller than witty, but as you can see, he had a smile ready to go. Here, he's celebrating his 80th birthday, some eight months before he died. He helped me professionally without realizing it. As founder and head coach...

Writing Through Thinking

WRITING TIP: I often write before I touch a keyboard. When I'm working with a client, I listen. I try to learn their voice and their message. Then I write the speech in my head. Actually, I don't write it. I deliver it to an imaginary audience. I'll speak...

On Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I don't know if he cares... or if he doesn't. We've never chatted. It is what it is. I'm a writer. Things like that catch my eye. What I like about it -- Bob getting the award -- is it caused a new look at his old work...