January 19, 2024
I was surfing around, waiting for next week to begin so I can start up the next phase of my publicity campaign. On a blog that’s run by two brothers whose work has appeared in The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, I found a post on the movie Lone Survivor. In the piece…
January 18, 2024
Here’s the second passage from my novel Invisible Idiot, which became Chasing the Last Whale, Volume Two of the Ghosts Trilogy. Though I agreed with the need to remove these scenes, I liked them, so I’m publishing them here when I get the urge. Tonight I have the urge. Excised Snippet Number Two: Terrible Pagan…
January 18, 2024
I just read an article about how the Saudi Mutawaa (religious police from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) have banned women from using swing sets. The rationale is that the police are protecting the women from any men who might see them and get excited. Thus, Saudi culture not…
January 17, 2024
Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the day Mom and Dad took their first steps on the journeys that removed them from my life. Tim and I didn’t commemorate it in any special way. We commemorate our parents daily, talking about what they did and why. The one favor our parents did us by dying…
January 16, 2024
I haven’t seen Lone Survivor, the movie about former US Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell. But I read LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson’s review of it. In her review, Nicholson says the following. As the film portrays them, their attitudes to the incredibly complex War on Terror, fought hillside by bloody hillside in the Afghan…
January 16, 2024
Dear Mom and Dad: Today I got some really good news, which I’ll keep to myself for now. In case you hadn’t heard, I signed up with a fake publicity firm that stole almost $40,000 from me. The guy who runs the company has no background in the publishing industry. What happened was that Tim…
January 16, 2024
My letter to Mom and Dad continues. 28. On April 14, Mom, you came home. You refused to eat or exercise, even though you’d been told over and over that you needed to do so in order to be a good candidate for chemotherapy. We fought about it, and you accused us of criticizing you….
January 15, 2024
Even though things didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, I want to give a big thank you to everyone who read Ghosts and Ballyhoo and sent me messages. I read them all, and they mean a lot to me. The next phase is going to be very satisfying. People who commit terrible acts of…
January 14, 2024
After Dad died I recorded a ten-part video blog about his death. At the time I wasn’t sure if I’d ever make it public, but I eventually decided that I shouldn’t. What changed my mind is the fact that my former publicists scammed me of almost $40,000. What they did was watch these videos, read…
January 14, 2024
Here are the final five parts of Dad’s Death, the videos my publicists used to scam me. I thought long and hard about whether or not such private documents should be made public. The reason I showed them to my publicists was that I needed to explain my solitary lifestyle and why I didn’t want…