Man, it’s been a long time since I blogged. I’ve been undercover, though, and it’s hard for me to blog when I have to hold back secrets. The muse gets skittish when not given full rein, at least mine does. Giddyup, Triggette!
I’m tweeting presently as a character in a Twitter movie, spending hours a day [...]

My love of the Bard began at the University of Colorado, in the early 1980s. I was lucky enough to have Masterpiece Theatre showing several plays on PBS in the evenings, while I took an introductory course on He Who Should Be Named a Bajillion Times. So I got to see Derek Jacoby as Hamlet [...]

This is what happens when one is desperate for word count during NaNoWriMo:
It seemed like he had to have everything his own way and that way was not my way because I like stuff to be up front and to make sense but he didn’t like it that way he liked it when stuff didn’t [...]

Just finished reading Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville. Am flummoxed. Quite a read, a page turner, but I never read a book before that only contains bad memories for me. I think back on it and squirm and sigh. The art of revulsion.

It’s in the steam punk genre with more that a smidgen of [...]

I hate coolness. With a hot hate.
Everything I love is anti-cool. I love kindness and thoughtfulness; sincerity and generosity and understanding and warmth – childishness with a passion. Boy, what a dork, huh?
I also care immensely, and if you show you really really care, man, whew, talk about uncool. Wouldn’t be so bad if the [...]

Once upon a time there was a little mouse. Her name was Story. Which wasn’t her real name of course (that was Agatha). Since who ever heard of a name like Story? But everybody called her Story because she never told the truth, at least not the truth like mouse-folks was used to hearing it.

When [...]

In my dreams I told my dream teacher I’d never talk about my dreams in a blog. So, since I’m all about lies within lies within lies within truth, I’ll do it anyway. Anybody who hates listening to dreams, you can leave now.
Last night I had a dream. I was at some sort of art [...]

I’m a mouse guy, I admit it. Always been, always will.

Grew up singing “Here I come to save the day!” Mighty Mouse was always on the way in my imagination, and he’s still nibbling away down there, trying to poke his way into reality. Not sure I ever saved any days, but I sang that [...]

Once upon a time there was a little girl. She was the most precious and beloved little girl in the whole wide world. People loved her more than anything. Circus bears would laugh to see her wave. The bumblebees buzzed for her. The moon giggled at her passing in the early eve. Sad old men [...]

Read this tale once. Long ago, in the misty mists of time. Last night if I recall rightly, and part of today. Called The Legend of Jimmy Gollihue. Don’t sound like much, I know. Legend, ha.
Well, come to find out it is a legend, a true one, as true as magical realism can get – which [...]

Just had one of those deep scary gulps while thinking about writing tonight’s blog, one of those things a writer or other performance artist gets when they ponder their audience, and how much you want them to love you. Funny that no matter how deeply one craves and desires approval from The Beloved, you must [...]

The main focus of the dedicated writer, as any devoted scribbler will tell you, is to figure out ways to keep from writing. Twitter is excellent for that, as I have found out in the past couple of months. While on Twitter yesterday I discovered the perfect thing. Copy and pasting and mouse-clicking, oh yeah! [...]

This is the story of the funnest writers’ game in all the land, even better than the dictionary game. It came about for me with my best pal Don Kraus, five or maybe even six years ago now, when for some godforsaken reason we started emailing one another back and forth as imaginary characters, he as the legendary Baron [...]

Prose heaven. I love description and also the English countryside, so can’t help myself, have to post a couple more paragraphs from the master, Patrick O’Brian, out of the eleventh book, The Reverse of the Medal, in his 20-volume sea opus. It’s a great example of the value of specificity for a writer, as well as an [...]

Sometimes you’re dead and sometimes you’re livin’
Sometimes you’re pickin’ and sometimes a-grinnin’
Sometimes you’re wishin’ and sometimes you’re fishin’
And sometimes you’re going home.
Songs beyond day and souls beyond givin’,
Sunsets in morning and sunrise at evenin’,
Saints are a-sinnin’ and sinners believin’,
And sometimes you’re going home.
It’s just like a wish and it’s like a dead fisher,
Just like that [...]

How come smart guys are bummed out so much? I mean, what’s the point in being smart if you can’t figure out a way to be happy? Not much use being intelligent if all it does is turn you into a well-spoken miserable whiner.
This came to my attention recently as I was scouring the internet [...]

Well folks, here we go, my first movie review ever. Someone on Twitter said they would send a DVD of this movie to any blogger who would post of review of it, so on a whim I said sure, and sent them my address in a Twitter message. To my surprise, a few days later [...]

Perfection alert! Perfection alert! Tweet tweet tweet!
I’m about to paste in a long passage of the most delightful prose to come down the pike in many a century, by my lights. From the book Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian, the first in a series of British naval adventures during the Napoleonic wars.
His two main characters, [...]

Just read the memoirs of Julia Cameron, revered author of The Artist’s Way, and have to comment. It was the strangest of many strange reads in my life.
Long have I admired Julia Cameron, and still do, even after reading that dissonant autobiography, maybe even more now, regardless of her acuity of judgement. She has been [...]

Got this new project going and have to share. It’s a continuation of the writer’s exercise I did with Sandra Jensen: each writer creates a character, then you start writing back and forth to each other as if those characters are really alive and corresponding.
What they will talk about, or even be, is something that [...]