It hit me today: The Ghosts Trilogy is dead. I won’t be able to find another publicist. That’s why I made the decision to give away books in exchange for reviews. For those of you who aren’t writers, let me explain something: Writing is a life of groveling. You grovel to agents, you grovel to…
Hurricane House, the Tin Man, and free e-books.
April 19, 2024
During our time in Venezuela, we spent three summers on Sanibel Island, Florida, in a little resort called Hurricane House. As best as Tim and I can remember, the years were 1969, 1970, and 1971. Tim took these photos in 1970; our brother Paul shot the picture of Tim. It was on one of these…
Residue
April 7, 2024
Mom and Dad made no real provisions for their deaths. For some reason Dad threw away most of his tax documents. Since his death we’ve discovered that he had plenty to hide. Mom’s residue, on the other hand, is fully intact. Tim and I have learned a lot about not only Mom and Dad but…
A choice I never had to make
March 28, 2024
As Mom and Dad got more enfeebled, I became obsessed with a scenario that haunted me day and night. First I bought guns to protect my parents, since they were the victims of a home invasion, Mom could barely walk, and Dad kept getting into fights with strangers. But the guns wouldn’t have prevented what…
What separates me from my brother Tim
March 24, 2024
I’ve written a lot about my brother Tim. He and my brother Eric are the people to whom I’m closest in the world. Tim designed the covers of all three books in the Ghosts Trilogy. Each cover was one basically “one and we’re done.” We discussed ideas for Ghosts and Ballyhoo, but after that I…
The urn does not care
February 9, 2024
I’ve been told that my posts about my father cause anger. Though I’m under no obligation to explain anything, I will. My intention is to chronicle a life gone awry. I do this to banish lingering pain. Some of that pain is the result of things my father did to me, and some is the…
The Great Ham Debacle of 1993
December 20, 2023
When I read news articles and listen to the radio, the one constant is the state of confusion people have about what motivates the bad decisions we see being made daily. Our government is utterly dysfunctional, companies do really crazy things that alienate their customers, individuals mess up their lives to a level of parody,…
A funny thing happened…
December 18, 2023
When I say a funny thing happened, I don’t mean funny like this. I mean, really unusual. A few days ago, I got an e-mail asking about my Great-uncle Colonel Curtis Yarnell Kimball, O.B.E., U.S. Army (ret.) Here he is being awarded a medal by Field Marshal Bernhard Montgomery in Munich, April of 1945. At…
A forgotten memory resurfaces
December 13, 2023
Mom saved all my letters. I found them in a box marked “Tom’s letters,” sensibly enough. Mom didn’t always write such precise descriptions on her many, many, many boxes. Most are unmarked, or they say, “Memorabilia,” or “Photos.” Even the boxes marked “Wictor photos,” for example, have lots of non-Wictor images in them. Tonight, in…