Last night I was at a gathering at my friend Byron’s house. He had lured me down the opposite end of our tiny state with the promise of a firepit and good bourbon. Like most Rhode Islanders, I balk at driving more than twenty minutes anywhere, but my Long Suffering Wife pointed out that…
I was flattered when a good friend of mine, a professor and a street brawler for democracy in strange foreign lands, made all the stranger in 1997, asked me to read his first manuscript. I can not adequately convey how difficult it is to write your first novel. They’re easy to start but they are…
The park ranger looked at me, she was trying to find a nice way of asking if we knew what we were doing. It was her first time dealing with the Blackstone Valley Aquatic Recreation Society, a collection made up almost entirely of men old enough to know better than to do the stupid…
I don’t read much new fiction anymore. Especially not stuff in the genre that I write. I live in mortal fear of unintentionally copying someone else’s work. I suspect that all mystery fiction is derivative at this point. When I need to scratch my fiction reading itch, I tend to favor things in different…
Last week I wrote that I don’t want my blogs here to be my just reposting my Substack. Unfortunately to stay viable int he Googleverse I have to post something here at least once a week. The stuff posted here, might be similar but it won’t be the same as the weekly Substack or…
From today’s Substack. https://open.substack.com/pub/pcolt/p/creatures-of-habit?r=43bho8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I have to admit that I have become kind of a Substack junky. I obsessively check my stats and try figure out if it indicates a growing audience or some other trend. Hey, I like validation as much as the next guy. I was going to repost last night’s Substack here but this morning…