"Qui plume a, guerre a." — Voltaire
A small group of fiction writer friends and I have started to get together once a month at a local Irish pub to talk shop. The idea behind the group was the desire to discuss craft — the standards like character, plot, and voice, but also the second-ring things like habits, style, and software. And […]
I’m a lifelong Star Trek fan, but I like to poke fun at the franchise because, well, that’s how my sense of humor rolls. (But don’t just take my word for it; the best jokes about Star Trek are to be found in the bar at any science fiction convention, from the fans — and […]
Censorship via the “free” market: PayPal, claiming to be acting on behalf of credit card companies, has been threatening to close down the accounts of retailers and distributors that sell works of certain types of erotica. Faced with this ultimatum, many distributors have asked those authors to pull their works (at least for now). Smashwords […]
This is a palimpsest of an essay that I’m fleshing out for possible use as a future “37 Minutes” column on Channel 37. Pardon the construction. As my writer friends know (because I rarely shut up about it), I have been a huge fan of the action-adventure show Burn Notice ever since catching it midway […]
The secret fantasy of every gearhead (myself certainly included). Notice the requisite messenger bag?
Monday morning I did a telephone interview with Tom Ahern for an article I’m writing on nonprofit communications, and we ended up having a ninety-minute free-wheeling conversation that was one of the most fascinating, stimulating, entertaining, informative, educational, and frankly just downright brilliant discussions I have had in a long time. And one of Tom’s […]
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPad back in January of last year (has it really been that long already?), there was a moment during the presentation when he seemed to forget he was onstage, and for a few seconds he sat there absorbed with his wonderful new device — just a man and […]
To the slogan-wavers of all political stripe who have been marching up and down Facebook of late, I offer this quiet but insistent rejoinder: Feel free to redistribute.
And if he’s really hardcore, he’ll be all fountain pen up in that letter.