March 2026

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 anything. Could be a song, or a book, or that thing out the window. That sounds like me. 

Still, if it weren’t for my brain doing the brain things that it does and having a mind of its own sometimes, I wouldn’t be able to be writing this while listening to music, with words. I am not typing those words; I’m typing these words while listening to those words while thinking about a totally different song by a totally different band. The song I’m thinking about is by They Might Be Giants called “Brain Problem Situation.” You’ll find out what I’m listening to in a few paragraphs. Hang on. 

For all of the problems I cause myself with my ADHD, I know that I wouldn’t want to change anything about it because I know that this is what makes me me and allows me to do all the things I like. I like to teach and push my students to think. I like to design classes and programs in new and interesting ways. I like to write books, stories, and essays and even when they are part of a series, I never want to make the same thing twice. I don't want to just follow the same formula when it comes to being creative. I like to make up songs about almost everything I do; my whole life is a musical, and each day the songs are slightly different. 

There is a reason my favorite character in The Lord of the Rings is Tom Bombadil. He is so unpopular that Peter Jackson didn’t even include him in the movies because no one (except me) wants to see the weird guy who makes up songs about pretty much everything, while just keeping himself to himself. He is happy to lend a helping hand and do a Hobbit a favor now and again, but really, he just wants to stay home and make art and be original. I get you, Tom. I see you. 

My editor, Jen, once told me, “Your books are just like Jane Austen’s books, but nothing like them at all.” Considering my novels are called The Austen Chronicles, you would think I would have been offended, but I took it as the compliment it was meant to be. What I heard is that I wrote books that could totally stand alone, that tell unique and original stories, while paying homage to something I love. Isn’t that the whole point of being creative? We are all inspired by what we have seen or read or experienced, but we should all want to make something new.  

Shouldn’t we strive to make something that could be perceived as ugly instead of making something that is technically “perfect” but just like everything else? One recent review of my short story “Play it Again, Junior” from the new 52 Love Short Story collection went like this: “3 stars YA fiction not that bad.” I appreciate that the reviewer didn’t put “that” in italics, as the entire meaning of the review would have changed for me. Maybe she did mean it was bad, but not terrible, like cottage cheese left out in the sun. Still, she gave me 3 out of 5 stars, and I am thrilled. That review was not that bad at all.

I love a movie that takes a risk. I love a show that breaks the fourth wall, and the formula, and everything else to tell a story. I love it when a book surprises me by being just what it needs to be instead of just what some editor said it should be. I love it when someone picks up a guitar and belts out something from the heart, even if it is a bit out of key. Remember, when The Beatles showed up, they were revolutionary. They have become the standard, but they weren’t always.

Oscar Wilde is credited with the saying, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” I could not agree more. There is much debate on the veracity of this. I’ve not read every word he’s ever written, but I’ve read a lot of them. He was funny, quippy, heartbreakingly honest, and above all else, a true original. I am willing to give him the credit for this one because I have to admit, it sounds like him. 

Notes from my headphones

In 1995, an Alaskan folk-singer, who cut her teeth in the clubs of San Diego, burst on the scene with one of the best-selling debut albums of all time. The album was called Pieces of You, and the artist went by one name, Jewel. It was, and is, a classic. I owned it on cassette and CD. Every song is good. The second single was called “You Were Meant For Me” and was co-written by a Canadian troubadour called Steve Poltz, who had also migrated to San Diego and was the frontman for an incredibly fun, indie rock band called The Rugburns. I went to see Jewel in Detroit, and the Rugburns opened and played as her backing band during the show. It was an amazing musical experience. 

Since then, Jewel has acted, and written books, and become an activist, all while making great music. Poltz disbanded The Rugburns, although they still play together every now and again, and became a solo artist who tours constantly, doing hundreds of shows per year. Occasionally, he stops his wanderings long enough to release another album. Since my last newsletter, his new album Joyride dropped, and boy, does he still have it. In the day of auto-tuned music, and “live performances” that are just lip-syncing and dancing, and worst of all, AI “music” topping the charts, it is nice to hear a guy and a guitar and some studio musicians banging something with heart. All of his songs are stories, and the standout on this new album is “Love a Little Bigger.” Get past the first verse. The chorus is where the lesson lies. 

Notes from my bookshelf

I’m only going to write about one book this month, because, hoo boy, did I read a humdinger. Mark Z. Danielewski, who wrote one of my favorite books, House of Leaves, 25 years ago, is back with a vengeance with his nearly 1300-page doorstopper, Tom’s Crossing. I alternated between the E-book and the audiobook so that I could essentially spend every spare moment reading. Doing so, I finished it in 5 days, and I had to resist the urge to turn back to page one and start the audiobook over. 

To say that the book is magic is an understatement. Think of whatever book or work of mythology, or if you are a person of faith, your favorite parable from your religious text of choice. Got it? Odds are, there is a reference to that in Tom’s Crossing. Here are some of the influences that stood out to me. Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Hugo, Dostoevsky, Brontë (all three of them), William Faulkner, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Margaret Mitchell, Cormac McCarthy, and Clinton Portis. He even has a line that is almost lifted from True Grit, which is Portis’ magnum opus. It is a love letter to everything that came before it, while managing to be totally original. I never knew what was going to happen next; each page was an adventure.

It takes place in 1982 and follows two teenagers, three horses, and a ghost as they travel up a supposedly unscalable mountain while being chased by one of the most villainous villains and his sons, who are mostly terrible chips off the old rotten block. It is a love letter to Generation X. As a Gen Xer, I appreciate being seen. Everything we did was dangerous and hard and unsupervised. We solved problems and fixed things with cardboard and duct tape. We climbed where we didn’t belong and fell long and hard, but got up and tried again. Rube Goldberg has got nothing on Generation X. We may be small and easily forgotten, but no one can ever say we were unoriginal. 

Rumor has it there was an 1800-page draft. I have to be honest, if he put out a 10th anniversary edition with those extra 600 pages, I would read it. Just thinking about it now makes me want to read it again. It is a desert island book for sure because every time you read it, I am sure you get something totally new out of it. 

Notes from my keyboard

If you’ve been a subscriber for some time, you might remember late last year (2025), I mentioned that I stopped working on Haunting Northanger because I had another idea that was filling my head. Well, that idea became a short story called “Flip” that was accepted for publication in January and was published on the 12th of March. It is a work of speculative political utopian fiction, set ten years from now. It is written entirely as a conversation, all dialogue, no narration. Quite a departure from The Austen Chronicles, to be sure. I’m very proud of it. I hope you like it. You can read it here for free. 

Please share it far and wide with all your friends and let me know what you think. I’d love to chat about it.