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What “Saturday Night Live” Can Teach Writers About Failure
Failure sucks, but failure isn’t all bad. After rehearsal on Thursday night, I came back home to find my wife watching a new four-part documentary on the history of Saturday Night Live. I missed the first episode and most of the second, but I ended up watching the last two. The third episode is an entire deep dive on the Cowbell sketch. That was fun. The fourth, however, was brand-new to me. Entitled, “Season 11: The Weird Year,” it details the new-to-me saga of that year. And there was a lot I didn’t know. Randy Quaid was a cast member?! Full disclosure: I didn’t start watching SNL regularly until my…
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Give Yourself the Grace to (Re)Start Your New Year’s Resolutions
How are your New Year’s Resolutions coming along? Today is Quitter’s Day 2025. It’s the day when a shocking 80% or more people who made New Year’s resolutions have tapped out. These are the same folks who made decisions so fervently at midnight on 1 January. I’m one of those folks who always uses a new year (or month or week or day) to reset myself and my habits. Because that’s what resolutions really are, habits. Some of these habits have become embedded in my internal hard drive. I no longer need to keep track of my daily flossing because, years ago, I created the habit. Ditto for my daily…
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My Favorite Books from 2024
The year 2024 turned out to be one of my best reading years in quite awhile. Granted, I kept pace via audiobooks, but since that is my go-to, I don’t even count it. The Stats Overall, I got through 34 books in 2024, and I was 45 minutes (2 chapters) from finishing a 35th on New Year’s Eve. My science fiction book club (now entering its sixteenth year!) can account for at least eight books most years. Yeah, I don’t finish a book I don’t like. Long ago I realized it is better to pull the ripcord on a bad book and read something I enjoy versus slogging through a…
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Are you scared to put your side hustle on LinkedIn?
Do you have a side hustle? A passion project you do in addition to a day job? The kind of activity that, given a perfect set of circumstances you’d happily make your main vocation? Is it on LinkedIn? Why not? Now, I admit, up until recently, my side hustle was not on LinkedIn either. In fact, when my current boss at the day job interviewed me two years ago this month, he actually brought up my author business. It was the first time anything like that had happened. It surprised me, but it also should have served as all the incentive I needed to update my LinkedIn profile. Yet I…
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A Compelling Book That Will Make You Assess Your Life: The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave
Know how, as soon as you finish watching The Sixth Sense, you watch the movie again, knowing the truth, and it all lines up? That’s how the prologue is in The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave. Hat tip to The University of Texas at Austin, Apple TV, and Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop for introducing me to the work of Laura Dave. How do those things connect? Well, my wife watched the adaptation of Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me on Apple TV and some of those episodes took place in Austin, Texas, and, specifically, the University of Texas football stadium. I stopped, watched those episodes, and then…
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The Batman Sequel 35 Years in the Making: Batman Resurrection
Who knew that one of the best sequels of the year would be a novel to a thirty-five-year-old movie? Batman is my favorite hero. I consider the day the first Tim Burton film with Michael Keaton as Batman/Bruce Wayne debuted—23 June 1989–to be the real Batman Day. No matter what kind of Batman movie has been made in the years since, the ‘89 Batman was special. So when I heard John Jackson Miller was writing a direct sequel to that film, I was thrilled. And boy did Miller deliver. A Direct Sequel Batman: Resurrection starts in Gotham City right as the Joker is flooding downtown with Smilex gas. That would…
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New Book Preview: Have Yourself a Merry Christmas Murder
It may be a week shy of Halloween, but Christmas is just around the corner. And so is my new book. It’s called Have Yourself a Merry Christmas Murder and it will be available next month. But today, I’d like to share a little background to the story and Chapter 1. Hallmark Christmas Movies I love the Hallmark movies even though nearly every one of them is predictable. You know the structure. City Girl returns home to her small town. We meet her family, including the quirky BFF from high school who never left town. There’s the ex-boyfriend/Cute New Guy who now works as a [Small Town Job] and volunteers…
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Meeting Harlan Coban’s Myron Bolitar For The First Time
Where has this book been all my life? On the bookshelf of your local store, just waiting to be read. We’ve Only Just Met After All This Time Harlan Coben has been writing professionally since 1990 but he really became famous for the Myron Bolitar series, starting in 1995. I’ve known about Coben for a long time. Multiple best-sellers every time he publishes a book. Multiple adaptations of his stories on TV. And, recently, the professor of a BBC Maestro online class that helps writers craft thrillers. I’m always game to learn—especially from an acknowledged veteran of the genre—so I bought the class. While listening to Coben talk in the…
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Tom Straw Channels Anthony Bourdain In His Delightful New Book
Every now and then, you hear a concept for a book and it instantly hooks you. This is one of those books. What if an Anthony Bourdain-type celebrity chef who hosts a TV travel show is also a CIA spy? Hooked? Well, I was. You see, I really enjoyed Bourdain’s writings, his TV shows, and his way of seeing the world. His shows were appointment television. His books—always get the audio because he reads them—were bought on day one. So it should come as no surprise that when Tom Straw’s new book was announced, I got it on day one. Prepare the Narrator Sebastian Pike is the Bourdain stand-in in…
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T.J. Newman at Murder by the Book
Fresh off the publication of her third thriller, Worst Case Scenario, author T.J. Newman landed at Houston’s Murder by the Book on Thursday evening for her first visit to the independent bookstore. Local journalists, Natalie J. Harms, interviewed the former flight attendant and what emerged was a lively discussion of the book, her processes, and the winding road she took to becoming a published author. The Key is the Research It’s the question every author fields: where did you get the idea for [Current Book]. Newman told the story of how she researched her first thriller, Falling. She asked pilots about their biggest fears. One commented that it was a…