Category Archives: On Writing

What My Beard Means to Me

Several days ago, on a Sunday, I decided to grow a beard.  On Monday, the company for which I have been doing blog articles called, informed me they were discontinuing the blog and, in effect, fired me.  It was due … Continue reading

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Balance

After reading the last chapter, “Askew”, one of my sons who doesn’t live with me wrote and said, “Why are you so down on the US?  Sure it’s got problems, but I’ve built a good life here and in many … Continue reading

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Book Review: Jack London, Sailor on Horseback by Irving Stone

We writers are often lonely people.  We labor away day after day, alone in our rooms at our keyboards.  Often those around us don’t understand what we are going through and what drives us to persevere. How I acquired this … Continue reading

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Job Search, or, The Hunter Lost in the Forest

Things went wrong today – so wrong that I have to write about it.  This is a writer’s only recourse.  Otherwise it will bubble up inside like lava in a volcano and consume me. I started the day with the … Continue reading

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Book Update

Generally I confine my blog to essays, book reviews, and so on, but occasionally a bit of self promotion is not amiss.  As I prepared to make my grand departure from Greece for the United States, knowing I would be … Continue reading

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Paranoia Revisited

When contemplating my upcoming return to the United States after thirty-five years abroad I realized that the prospect terrified me.  Analyzing a fear is one method of banishing it, so I decided to consider why my native land held such … Continue reading

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Transitions

For over fifteen years I have stood fast here in Thessaloniki, raising a family and working at private language schools teaching English.  The family never ends this side of the grave, though responsibilities diminish as the kids grow, but a … Continue reading

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Who I Am

I am a writer.  That’s what defines me.  I never seriously wanted to be anything else.  Oh sure, when I was young I thought of doing this and that.  When very young I had a Classics Illustrated comic version of … Continue reading

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Adventures

I am reminded of when I stood at the freeway entrance, my thumb out, ready to hitchhike off into the unknown, at the start of my first great journey.  I wrote about this experience in my memoir, “World Without Pain: … Continue reading

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Book Review: Think Like a Publisher by Dean Wesley Smith

I stumbled upon Dean Wesley Smith’s blog about a year and a half ago, and it changed my life as a writer.  At the time he was writing the series “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing”, which is still available … Continue reading

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