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Grocery Store Books and My First Stuart Woods Novel
We’re all book nerds here, right? Do you know where all bookstores in your town are located? Do you frequent independent bookstores where the folks see you and greet you by name? When you travel, do you plan on visiting bookstores in other towns? Do you sign up for newsletters from your favorite authors? Do you know publication dates of books by your favorite authors and clear your reading schedule so you’ll be able to start reading the day that book is released? Do you max out your allowable checkouts at your local library? Do you have more books in your house than you’ll ever be able to read in…
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Another Visit to Patterson, New Jersey, with Andy Carpenter, Lawyer and Dog Lover
What is it with storms, power outages, and Andy Carpenter? Beryl: The Rest of the Story I wrote last week’s post during my Friday lunch hour and went home to a house without electricity. Last Saturday, I returned to Lowe’s to buy two more 5-gallon gas cans (daily gas runs were getting old) and had half a mind to buy a second generator. An older worker at Lowe’s said I didn’t need to because my 6,500-watt generator was more than enough to run all the fans, window AC, and the fridge. The wife and I cleaned the fridge and plugged it in. Within the hour, the thing was making ice.…
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Dispatches from Houston in the Aftermath of Hurricane Beryl
Who would have thought an approaching hurricane would have been the easy part? Hurricanes are scary things. Their approach can knife fear down your spine, give your stomach that funny feeling you get when you ride a roller coaster, and cause you to lose sleep. I experienced all those things last weekend as Beryl—which had already devastated Jamaica—opted to head north to Houston. The Hurricane Itself The wife and I plus our two dogs and a cat went to bed on Sunday night expecting Beryl to arrive in the wee small hours of the morning. Storms are always scarier at night. We had spent the day prepping the house, staging…
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Jaws the Book vs. Jaws the Movie: Which is Better?
I finally did something I’ve been wanting to do for many summers: read Peter Benchley’s Jaws. The original hardcover came out in February 1974 and the movie the following summer. I’ll admit that it took me quite a long time to see the movie. I can’t remember the first time I saw it, but it might’ve been on one of the network broadcasts. It wasn’t until the 1990s that I finally saw the whole thing. But what about the book? I remember my mom reading the paperback in the late 70s. This is one with the movie poster as its cover so you can imagine how much my pre-teen self…
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“Hit Man” is Counter Movie Programming for Summer 2024
Well, that wasn’t what I expected. But maybe I should have. “Hit Man” debuted on Netflix last Friday after spending a few days in the theater. Glen Powell stars as Gasy Johnson, a college professor who moonlights as a hit man for the cops. No, he’s not really a hit man. He just take a meeting, gets the perps on tape asking for a murder-for-hire, and then the cops swoop in. The movie was inspired by a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth dating back twenty-four years. Gary isn’t just some ordinary joe meeting people in bars or restaurants. He’s a psychology professor who digs deep into his marks, figuring…
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Always Strive for Your Dreams
Every year during the first week of June, my mind drifts back to the first week of June 1944. The week leading up to D-Day. Even now, eighty years later, the magnitude of the courage of the men who stormed those beaches never fails to take my breath away. There have been many books written and documentaries compiled, oral histories recorded and movies filmed. One in particular is Saving Private Ryan which features a grueling opening segment. As horrific as those opening minutes are, you know it’s all just make-believe and that it’s only a taste of what really went down that morning. Every year, I look at the photos…
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Start Your Summer Reading Season With Tom Straw and Matt Goldman
I walked into Murder by the Book on Wednesday knowing one author. I left knowing two. I’ve enjoyed Tom Straw’s writing before I knew who Tom Straw was. Back in the fall of 2009, the second season of “Castle” premiered on our TV screens, but HEAT WAVE, the first book “written by” Richard Castle, showed up on bookshelves. What was this meta magic? Nearly every fall after 2009, when a new Castle season started there was a Castle book. What made the books great was this: unlike the TV show characters Castle and Beckett, their counterparts, Jameson Rook and Nikki Heat, actually got together. It was the mirror universe of…
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Star Wars: The Phantom Menace at 25
It was a Star Wars event sixteen years in the making. It was eight years after Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire novel filled the void some wondered if anyone wanted filled. It was two years after the triumphal return of the original trilogy returned to the theaters with new content. And that first trailer was spectacular. Everyone in my office all but crashed the system downloading it and watching it over and over again. New worlds. A young Obi-Wan. And a double-bladed lightsaber! This was going to be an awesome movie! My wife and I went on opening day. We were engaged and this was the first new Star Wars movie…
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Let Clive Cussler’s The Heist Steal Your Mind and Attention
Clive Cussler knew his readers. The prolific author wrote over sixty books in his lifetime (he died in 2020 at age 88) spread across five main series: Dirk Pitt, Sam and Remi Fargo, the Oregon files, and Kurt Austin. But it is the Isaac Bell series that captured my attention from the jump. The Isaac Bell series features the titular character, the lead detective of the Van Dorn detective agency. As ruggedly handsome as you can imagine, dogged in his determination to find the culprit, and devoted to justice, Bell is the kind of man you want on your side. All of the stories are set in the early 20th…
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How Do You Prepare to Write a Novel?
Wednesday marked what I like to call my personal Writer’s New Year’s Day. It commemorates my decision on 1 May 2013 to write and complete the story based on a scene in my head—a man, wearing a fedora, knocking on a door, and being answered with bullets. I resolved to finish that story no matter what. I did, and it’s now called WADING INTO WAR: A BENJAMIN WADE MYSTERY. The decision, back in 2013, was inspired by a quote whose origins I have forgotten: “A year from now, you may have wished you had started today.” By 2015, I had accomplished something else: I had formed my own company and…