Last night the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. I was born less than three miles from Wrigley Field. The north side of Chicago is Cubs territory, through and through. Even people who don’t particularly like sports on the north side (yes, a handful of people like that do exist), still believed that every year […]

I finished a story for the next episode of Not About Lumberjacks on Wednesday. My wife read it yesterday and came back to the office to tell me she finished it. She liked it quite a bit, which is always good. (Especially because I wasn’t sure how this one would sit with her.) And then […]

We all have our seasons. For me, there’s something about the time from September and all the way into April that is wonderful. Specifically, though, the next three months are usually my best writing months. Mornings are dark, meaning quiet time as people sleep longer and the world stays hushed just a little longer than […]

We will see more 100-degree days in Texas, no matter how many people say, “The hot weather’s done for the year!” while looking at thermometers reading 97 degrees. But it is that time of year when things seem to change. I suppose the biggest change for me is, after four years with the big department […]

The short story I mentioned in the last entry? You can listen to it right here (or click on the image at the end of this post for a 20-second sample). (It’s about a woman who lands her dream job as a writer, but gets much more than she bargained for in the form of […]

I recently wrote about writers writing about writers. In an earlier draft of the entry, I mentioned a guy in several college classes I was in. He never actually wrote anything (as much as any of us could tell), but he talked about writing a lot. He rolled his own cigarettes, carried around a copy […]

I sometimes feel like I begin too many entries, here, with, “So I was listening to Jess Walter and Sherman Alexie on the Tiny Sense of Accomplishment podcast…” But it’s that good! In the most recent episode, Sherman and Jess talk about writers and lying. Some quotes from that section: I make stuff up at […]

I saw someone on a podcast community I frequent talk about what they do in their “real job.” It’s a term I’ve heard used frequently: I really love sculpting, but my real job is software development… There’s nothing I’d rather do in life than paint, but my real job is working as an admin… I […]

I had a list of things I planned to do this past weekend. It wasn’t a list written on a piece of paper or captured by an app to remind me to do these things at a specific time. It’s the list of things I do every weekend: I planned to write and record podcasts. […]

I have a friend who hates magicians. He feels they mock the audience in an act of, “I know something you don’t know!” (There are many people who feel this way about magicians.) Me, on the other hand…I like good magic. I don’t mind that the person on stage knows truths I don’t know. When […]

Last night, I did something for the first time in what feels like years… I started a new short story. I’m not sure if it’s actually been years, or only feels that way. In recent years, my focus has been on novels and podcasts. Outside of Megan Mayhew Bergman and Dan Chaon, I’m not sure […]

Reading this piece about John Steinbeck during lunch yesterday got me thinking about what is lost in one’s pursuit of what they love doing when bound by other things. Before getting to that, though, a bit about Steinbeck’s writing. There is Something More, Here I’ve mentioned plenty of times that I came to literary/contemporary literature […]