Swords, Specters, & Stuff
Welcome to My World
I started this blog in January 2012 for one simple reason: I love to write. I named it “Swords, Specters, & Stuff” because I especially love to write about writing, about books and movies in my favorite genres, about authors that mean a great deal to me. But there’s more to it than that, which is why I included “Stuff” in the title. It is “Stuff” that gives me carte blanche to write about anything, which is why you’ll see stories about special trips to Cooperstown, Sedona, and other places; about getting older; about baseball; about the otherworldly way in which I met my soul mate; about the loss of good friends, and so much more. Enjoy! And feel free to leave a comment.
Guilty Pleasures: Bats
Okay, a confession: of all the things that creep, crawl, fly, slither, swim, burrow, or move around by means of propulsion other than two legs, the ones that weird me out more than anything else and cause nightmares are—bats. Go figure. It’s not like we had a barn...
Who Needs A Writing Coach/Editor?
You writers out there: if you want to learn more about the wild and crazy publishing business, you’ve got to read Lynn Price’s book, The Writer’s Essential Tackle Box: Getting a Hook on the Publishing Industry. Lynn is the editorial director of Behler Publications, a...
Psycho Memories
Until Field of Dreams hit the screen in 1989, my number one favorite movie was Alfred Hitchcock’s classic horror flick, Psycho. That was a long run of twenty-nine years, Psycho having been released in 1960. A lot of great movies over the last two decades have pushed...
Searching For January
“Three years ago at dusk on a spring evening, when the sky was a robin’s-egg blue and the wind as soft as a day-old chick, I was sitting on the veranda of my farm home in eastern Iowa when a voice very clearly said to me, ‘If you build it, he will come.’” These words...
So Glad I Did It
Last month I wrote a post titled "Celebrating a Friend" in which I shared some thoughts and feelings about mystery writer and good friend, Jeff Sherratt. At the time Jeff was quite ill, and I wanted to make sure that he, above anyone else, read those words. Among...
Guilty Pleasures: Anacondas
Wait, what? Hey Mike, didn’t you write about this film already? Nope, this one is Anacondas, plural. This 2004 film has a whole lot more of the slithering creatures than the first one did. (Anaconda had two, so technically it could’ve been called Anacondas, but…oh,...
To Outline Your Story…Or Not?
For you writers, or even wanna-be writers out there, this bit of information may be helpful. I first presented it as a newsletter for my writing community a while back. To some writers, “outline” is a dirty word (much like “synopsis”). To others, it is an...
The Number People
I had forgotten about the Crazy Lady, a figure out of my past. No surprise, as it was over fifty years ago, and she played a small part in my life. But writing my most recent post—especially the last part of it, about one of my fictional characters traveling through...
Writing To Vent
Those of us who write novels have a great platform for saying pretty much anything we want. The characters we create often reflect our likes, our dislikes, our politics, our worldviews, and many other things. And there is nothing wrong with venting our spleens through...
Guilty Pleasures: Q, The Winged Serpent
On the Weird Scale, this 1982 flick ranks pretty high. A word of warning: you might not want to eat anything while you’re watching Q, The Winged Serpent. Within the first five minutes we have a window washer high up on the Empire State Building decapitated and see his...
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