Category: Writing
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Cake Talk
Of all the artists — musicians, painters, actors & stand-up comedians, even poets — I put my own kind at the very bottom. Novelists ask too much of their audience. These others thrive on immediacy, accessibility, and entertainment. Musicians bang it out live in short bursts or cast long, sweeping arcs; the audience has only to…
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Writers & Musicians
I could post the latest literary event on video, or this. Musicians make better company than writers. Books can wait until tomorrow.
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Wines from Hungary
I had a good time interviewing photographer and author Brian Neely some months back. His book, A Wine Filled Year, explores in photos and text the vineyards and wines and wine-making process from across the Hungarian countryside. The American Foreign Service Association was kind enough to post the exchange. I confess my opening is stilted (this…
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Chain Your Muse
I heard this gem last week, sound advice to anyone who bleeds ink: I keep my muse on a chain. And when I get 20 minutes I yank on the chain and say, ‘C’mon, muse.’ The man with the chain is Matthew Palmer, novelist and Foreign Service Officer, speaking at the American Foreign Service Association…
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Diplomats and Terrorists
Last month American Diplomacy included my review of Ambassador James R. Bullington’s Foreign Service Memoir, The Road Less Traveled. The book recounts a career that began with the U.S. military build-up in Vietnam and took the author to Burma, Chad, Benin, and Burundi, where he served as Ambassador, and Niger, where he served from 2001-2006 as Country Director…
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Expeditionary Diplomacy
The otherwise respectable American Diplomacy, which publishes ‘Foreign Service Despatches and Periodic Reports on U.S. Foreign Policy,’ included my review of of Ambassador James R. Bullington’s Foreign Service Memoir, The Road Less Traveled, in the latest lineup. The memoir recounts a career that started in expeditionary diplomacy for the State Department during the U.S. military…
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The Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade
I want loyalty, I need loyalty No writing has influenced my work more than Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Not the Bible. Not the Constitution. Not even The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is a pretty great book and should be thrown full force at anyone who tries to ban it. I wrote my first novel, Two…
