The subject this time is true crime. In keeping with my current reading list and my research reading for my own projects, this time I'm recommending Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone In The Dark (2018) about Joseph DeAngelo aka the Golden State Killer aka the Original Night Stalker aka the East Area Rapist aka the Visalia Ransacker, a serial burglar, rapist and murderer who committed dozens of crimes up and down the state of California from 1976 to 1986, an epic spree that dovetails with some of the true-crime aspects of my novella Tania the Revolutionary about the Manson Family, responsible for nine murders in the Los Angeles area in 1969, and about the Symbionese Liberation Army which committed kidnapping, murder, bank robberies and bombings in LA, San Francisco and Sacramento from 1974 to 1976. Originally published February 7, 2024.

This newsletter begins with a shout-out to Post-Modernism and to Lorrie Moore's new and very post-modern novel I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home. Post-Modernism has now been with us almost as long as Modernism and that's a long time because we have now decided that the earliest Early Modernism goes back to Shakespeare. Originally published November 3, 2023.

Friends, It’s been a challenging summer and a demanding year, but the good news is that mental health awareness is on the rise, and this time it’s got me thinking about our cultural safety nets for those with mental illness ranging from this new hotline to free Youtube segments to widely prescribed antidepressants, anti-anxiety narcotics, and anti-psychotics.  It’s also got me thinking about two titles:  Demon Copperhead, the new novel by Barbara Kingsolver, and David Copperfield, the classic by Dickens on which Kingsolver’s new book is based.  Originally published July 28, 2023.

This newsletter is about craft so if you aren’t into writing craft, get out while you can.  More specifically, this newsletter is about scene counting, that vice of novelists and perhaps almost nobody else.  Originally published April 28, 2023.