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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…
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The Five-Star Weekend Is So Much More Than a Book
To quote a wise man, I have taken my first step into a larger world. How It Started My wife has read nearly every book Elin Hilderbrand has written. Back five, six years ago, I even created a list on my phone with the books we had so that if I found myself at a bookstore and I happened upon one of her books, I knew which ones we owned. Heck, we even went to an event where we got to meet her and get her autograph. Recently, I checked out Hilderbrand’s latest, The Five-Star Weekend, from the library and, predictably, my wife flew through the pages. A couple of…
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Books That Pack a Real Emotional Punch Are Rare
When was the last time a book delivered an emotional response? One of my science fiction book club guys texted me earlier this week. He had finished a book that he admitted wasn’t great, but the sad ending actually touched him. He recalled the book REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi as one about which I very much had an emotional response. Heck, that response smacked me in the face so much so that I could barely relate the ending of the book to my wife without bawling. Later, when the book club met, I still was rather emotional in explaining why I loved the book so much. My friend remarked that…
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How to Ignite Your Inner Fire During Midlife
I’m not sure how many folks might need to read Chip Copley’s Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, but I certainly did. Now, before we go any further, I must say that I am not going through a midlife crisis. At all. Most people who see me ask me why I’m always smiling or be-bopping to a song I hear in my head. I’m an optimistic, happy person. Have been for as long as I can remember. But this book ignited something in me. I refer to my current age as “fifty f*cking five!” so you know where I am in life. It’s true…
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How Do You Select and Read The Books You Read?
I’m a book nerd. You too? Yeah, it’s great, huh. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a ton of To Be Read lists on my various devices and literal piles here at my house. I’m always reading blogs to see what’s new. I read articles about new books and keep adding them to my lists. On Facebook, the algorithms are primed to send me sponsored ads by authors or publishing companies promoting books they think I’d like. Sometimes, I strike gold. Others times, not so much. When it comes to consuming and actually reading these stories, I rely on both reading (on my Kindle or hard copy) as…
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What Was Reacher Like When He Had Friends?
I’ve now watched the second season of Amazon’s “Reacher” and not only am I caught up, I’m all in. Let’s be fair: I was all in back in the first fifteen minutes of the pilot episode, when Reacher did the Sherlock Holmes thing to the local police detective. Alan Ritchson’s portrayal of Reacher is fantastic. He has the brawn to take on anyone and be scared of no one. He has the brain to outthink any opponent, usually before they even realize it. But it’s Ritchson’s gentle demeanor that is probably my favorite part of the character on screen. Season 1 is Reacher the Wanderer, the guy who literally walks…
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How Do You Overcome Resistance in Your Creative Life?
(This was originally written in 2022, but this is a perennial reminder that Resistance is always present and we need to keep it at bay.) Where has this book been all my writing life? Well, right in front of me, the entire time. I’ve known about Steven Pressfield for a good number of years. In fact, I have his blog feed in my Feedly app and I am a subscriber to his email. But in all that time, I had never sat down and read his most famous non-fiction book: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. I guess I just wasn’t ready for…
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There Are Too Many Books and Too Little Time. Now What?
It started with The Six Million Dollar Man. A few weeks ago, I learned that the debut of one of my favorite childhood TV shows occurred fifty years ago. With that in mind, I thought about going back and rewatching the series, this time with adult eyes, and see how it holds up. When I got to the Peacock, I realized there were 99 episodes. I don’t have time for that, so I went to Google and conducted a search of the Top 10 episodes of the show. Thankfully, the Bigfoot episodes are in there as well as a few crossovers with The Bionic Woman (weren’t those epic episodes!). Now,…