You Can Thank Me Later

January turned out to be a solid month for productivity. Maybe it was the early snow followed by three weeks of sub-freezing temps that kept it on the ground until now. Maybe it was momentum from posting every day in December. Maybe it was the vibrations loosed on the world in tribute to Zakir Hussain, or some combination of all three.

Whatever kept my quill flying, it kept me away from this space as I plied more private writing. In fact, I almost forgot that I’d started a podcast last month called Backstory, inspired by heavy traffic to a book review I published here in 2015. I recorded it as an audio file and dropped it into Spotify so long ago I nearly forgot how. At the time I recorded two more reviews and never got around to sharing them.

Don’t worry, I’m re-learning. Here’s my next audio, with an updated name for my show: Backstory with Ben East.

Muller can’t get a stiffy. That shouldn’t be a problem for protagonist Sam Bennett, but it is, because Sam’s wife wants a grandchild. And Sam’s daughter is married to Muller, a talented hypochondriac and flabby Renaissance man, Sam’s foil with a killer recipe for pot brownies who can’t, for the life of him, get a stiffy. Except when he’s got Ruby on his mind.

The podcast title update was inspired by Kara Swisher’s Burn Book. Now that is a timely read and offers a deep dive into those horrid little technogarchs who’ve thrown in with the present dark vision for our country’s future. If I succeed in writing a review of that, I’ll know I’ve recovered my faculties and found a new capacity to focus.

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