November 2025

Hello Friends.

I was traveling for work last week, and I had the opportunity to go see a colleague’s mixed media art installation. He used pencils, crayons, paint, paper, and scraps of old paper palettes. Alone, any one of the works of art would have been interesting, but hung in a series, they were different. Seeing them the way he wanted us to see them, in that room, in that order, made a difference to me. Something in him had him make this art and hang it that way, in that space for that amount of time.

We had a conversation about what it meant to him as he was working on his artist statement. He ultimately said that he was struggling to come up with the “what it means” part of everything. He could explain how free he felt while making the pieces and how he came back to some of them over and over as the mood struck him, but he couldn’t really figure out what it meant. He couldn’t get to the why of it all.

It was a great conversation, but it got me thinking about two things, besides how I felt about his installation, which would take up more space than we have here, but the short version is that I liked it very much. The two things I thought about were the MGM Lion and Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Seems odd, right? How could either of those things have anything to do with this art installation?

The Gene Wilder version of Roald Dahl’s book is by far superior and creepier, and totally quotable, plus it has the song “Pure Imagination.” That song is so good and proves my point here as well, particularly the line “anything you want to…do it. You want to change the world, there's nothing to it.” I could have fibbed here and said I thought of it first, but I didn’t. Time and contemplation matter, and with time and contemplation, I made that connection, but what I immediately thought of was this interaction between Mike Teavee and Charlie Bucket.

Mike asks, “Why is everything here completely pointless?”

Charlie replies, “Candy doesn't have to have a point. That's why it's candy.”

It seems obvious now that Burton was inspired by Wilder, but of course, they were both inspired by Dahl, whose questionable politics aside, had some really interesting things to say about creativity and art. We make art because art matters. If you have ever seen an MGM film, which you likely have, at the beginning, the lion roars from inside the MGM logo, which reads, “ars gratia artis” over the lion’s head. That Latin phrase translates to art for art’s sake, and that is really the point.

Sure, Amazon bought MGM so they could have the rights to James Bond, which sounds like art for the sake of a bag full of cash, but at least they still have the motto up there. At least they are still making art with people, not AI slop. I’d rather know that there is a poorly written book, or a song that makes my head hurt, or a movie that is “not for me” than to let the be some art that some machine made by stealing the art of other people. Even Bezos, with his cold-hearted, cash-is-king, rocket-to-Mars attitude, knows, somewhere inside, that art matters. Remember, Amazon started as a bookstore that brought books to the people. Bringing art to the masses isn’t all that terrible.

So, friends, as we head into this holiday season where everything seems a bit cash grabby and companies are using Santa to sell everything, remember that all of the stuff that you buy was designed by someone. That commercial for whatever they are selling has writers, directors, musicians, designers, artists, and actors who just want to make art. This may be the way they pay their bills, so they can make that other art that exists to make us feel some kind of way, just because that is what art does. It doesn’t have to have a point. It doesn’t have to mean the same thing to you that it does to someone else. It just has to be.

Notes from my headphones

I love punk music. Three chords and three minutes. I am a happy guy. Some folks like to throw shade at pop-punk, the hooky, 90s, and early aughts version of punk rock, but not me. Three chords and three minutes, and I am a happy guy. I have always liked Bowling for Soup, a pop-punk group from Texas that just wants to have a good time. I’ve been listening to them a lot lately, as it seems that Cat really likes pop-punk too, and when I listen to it, the words flow like water. For those new subscribers, Cat is the main character of the book I am working on now.  Here is a song about Brad Pitt. It is really funny.

It was way back in the early aughts when I saw BFS for the first time that I came across a Nerd Core rapper called MC Lars. He opened for them and he put on a 20-minute show using his laptop as the DJ, and he rapped about art and books, and technology. I’ve been a huge fan since. He just dropped a new album, but it is only available to his backers, so I can’t share it with you yet, but here is a TED talk from 2012 where he talks about the hip-hop of Shakespeare. It is, as he would say, fresh.  

Notes from my bookshelf  

Speaking of the Bard, I read Lois Laveen’s clever take on Romeo and Juliet told from the perspective of Juliet’s Nurse. It is cleverly titled, Juliet’s Nurse. Titles work. I picked it up because I knew what it was. I called my series The Austen Chronicles for a reason.

At the other end of the spectrum, Gareth Brown released his new book, The Society of Unknowable Objects. It is fantasy writing mixed with a mystery, stuck inside folklore. I loved it. You don’t have to read his first book, The Book of Doors, but you should because it too is amazing, and there is an Easter Egg, so that is fun.

Notes from keyboard

I’ve been traveling a lot lately and had work stuff going on, which means I have not been writing as much as possible. I hate to frustrate my characters, especially when they are literally in the middle of some life-changing events. Thus, Cat and I have come to an understanding. I am going to write a little every day until the end of the year, even if it is just a paragraph each day, and we will be in good shape. I just crossed the 60,000^th word mark, so that feels great. I started the book near the end of April, so I am on a good clip, but I would like to be at 90K by January 1. I think I can do it because I will have a long break from work in December, and I can just write and write. 

Don't forget, I started a new web series called Fireside Chats with A.R. Farina, where I spend a few minutes, twice a month, talking about books in general and Jane Austen in particular. You can watch and subscribe here.  

Also, as a favor, if you have read my books but haven't left a review on Goodreads, I would really appreciate it.