2026

Hello friends. How are you doing? In the Northern Hemisphere, the dog days of summer are almost over. That pesky Sirius star will stop rising with the sun, and it will be just normal hot. Hopefully you are staying cool and having a great, relaxing time, taking a break, going on vacation, having a staycation, or whatever it is you want to be doing. Me? What am I doing? Reading and writing. One of the best times Lea and I ever had on a trip was when we rented a place that look

Hello Friends, summer is in full swing now. I hope you are enjoying whatever you enjoy doing the most during this time of year. I live in a part of the US where over half the people who have homes here bug out for cooler climates, but the heat dome seems to be the world’s convection oven right now. Although, it snowed in Montana a few weeks ago, so…you know, climate change. July 4th was the 250th birthday of the United States. Like all holidays, the holiday season seems to s

Hello Friends. Happy first day of summer. Big summer plans? Hope you are doing something fun. Me? What am I doing this summer? Thanks for asking. I am writing the final installment of The Austen Chronicles. The book is titled Regardless of You and is my take on my favorite Jane Austen book, Persuasion. Persuasion is one of the “other” three Austen books that non-Janeites generally forget about. I understand why people are smitten with Lizzy Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. I g

Hello Friends, I hope your spring has sprung. I know some of my friends in the mountains had a huge snowstorm last week…in May. Calendars matter, but Mother Nature is undefeated. She doesn’t care what you expect; she does what she does. As I wrap up book 5 of The Austen Chronicles and get close to the final draft of Comics Lit Vol 2 (more on this below), I realize that writing is often just as unexpected as a spring snowstorm. It is one of the big reasons that real writing,

Hello Friends. Happy April. I hope the tax fairy was good to you this year and left you a present under your pillow and not a bill. It is always good to get good news. So I will send you all happy thoughts. While I’m on the subject of good news, I was just asked to teach a graduate class this summer called Writing and Rhetoric of Nonfiction. I am pretty excited about that because, as you may have noticed, my newsletters have evolved into little works of literary analysis. I

Hello Friends, Big News! I got a new story published! You can read all about it way down at the end of the newsletter. I didn't want to bury the lede. Happy Solstice. Did you try to stand an egg on its end? Did it work? I have actually done it twice in my life that I can remember. That would be amazing if I were 8, but I’m in my 50s, so my success rate is low. I try; I fail. Sometimes I totally forget to try because I’m distracted by…something or other. Who knows. Could be an

Hello Friends. I hope you are doing well. This is going to zig before it zags. Buckle up and hold on. When I was seven, going on eight, two deranged people, one in December of 1980 and another in March of 1981, did some deranged things, and somehow The Catcher in the Rye was "blamed" for the actions of those unwell men. I’m not going to use their names here. I don’t want to give them more space in the world. If you know, you know. If you want to look it up. You can. The poin

Hello Friends, How is your January? Cold? Blustery? Feeling rudderless? I hope not. How are your New Year’s Resolutions? Holding firm? I sure hope so. I’m not a big resolution person, but I do like to set and meet goals. As part of my social media interactions, I do a fun book bingo project each quarter. When I first started, it was just random ideas like “book for middle-readers” or “female narrator.” Eventually, Lea and I started making themes (she also does all the amazin