Newsletter

When a Native American decides to share his or her medicine, that’s a gift one should never take lightly.

A bronze plaque held aloft in the tail flippers of a harbor seal was a sight that both pleased and startled me.

Any writer attempting to complete a thriller in our way-wacko year of 2020 had to face a rather high bar.

The main thing those two crazy kids in Verona just absolutely had to have was a fair chance to find true love. But they got stymied by their crude, violent, chaotic city. Verona seems, “A town without pity…” as an ol’ American pop tune spins it.

You all are quite hep, no doubt, to this term, “early adopter.” Right?

Read the first chapter of “Came A Horseman,” the new book by Paul McHugh

Christie Olson Day believes if we can bond with books and bookstores as kids, we’ll blaze a trail to a wellspring of stories that can sustain and nurture us throughout life.

The strongest prod to fitness I ever got came just as I touched age thirteen.

America’s great, homegrown activist-politician Tom Hayden has long been a hero of mine.

Maybe you’ve heard a bon mot like this: “The secret to public speaking is sincerity. Once you can fake that, the rest is easy.”

Anyone who can be talked out of it, should be.

Poetry’s strengths can be the strengths of all good writing.

What could be more ironic than a fabulous bookstore with a paltry selection?

Hemingway’s legacy to us was his bold use of simple declarative sentences.

Repeal the law of gravity, and it’s no surprise if somebody flies.

A century-plus of humans viewing cinema has forever altered the ways in which we all perceive and receive our stories. Consequently, that century ought to show some effect on how we craft our stories, too.

I’d say one of the most hazardous phrases human beings have scrawled is, “In vino, veritas” – which is of course Latin for, “In wine, there is truth.”

Antarctica does not have any polar bears. Yet, I felt pleased to discover on a recent voyage that this polar continent does boast a Camille Seaman.

All writers have some part they loathe about their process.

Let’s open this piece with a judgment: that reasoning by analogy is abhorrent. Well, why?

All we humans, without exception, swim our whole lives long through a sea of stories.

Long before I was ever able to plug a thumb drive into a laptop, I’d plug a pen into a notebook. And, late adopter that I am, I still do this, every single day. Computers certainly have their uses. Until or unless they go dark or haywire in some buggy or malware or ransom-ware fashion, that is.

Long before I was ever able to plug a thumb drive into a laptop, I’d plug a pen into a notebook. And, late adopter that I am, I still do this, every single day. Computers certainly have their uses. Until or unless they go dark or haywire in some buggy or malware or ransom-ware fashion, that is.

In the 70s, when I was working as a carpenter by day, and writing my first novel, “The Search for Goodbye-to-Rains” during the evenings, hanging out in the coffee shops of Marin County. Nearly got killed on my first carpentry job – two times!

Do you possess, or are you possessed by, a red-carpet dream? For some, the fantasy could be actual stardom. Including, let’s say, acquiring a glittering star on that sidewalk by Hollywood Boulevard. (Just don’t let them stick yours down anywhere near Trump’s star – that wacko wildly swinging a pickax just might accidentally hack yours up, too.)