Lessons from His Greatness, The Gatsby

Careers have been built on mining the depths of The Great Gatsby, that most iconic of American novels. I recently read it for the third time to see what I could learn about the craft of writing. I decided to stay close … Continue reading

Psi Fi Books Site Launched

Finally, my new site featuring my psi-fi books is up. (www.psifibooks.com).  That’s one brick in place for my nascent publishing empire. “Psi-fi” is pronounced the same as “sci-fi” but psi-fi focuses on psychological fiction in a technological world.  How is human psychology … Continue reading

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – Wroblewski

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is famous for cribbing the plot of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The ‘king’ (Edgar’s father) is murdered by his brother Claude (Claudius) who then beds the father’s wife, Trudy (Gertrude). Edgar is the half-mad prince who accidentally … Continue reading

Butler – Parable of the Sower

The title refers to Matthew-13 of the Christian Bible, a parable in which a sower scatters seeds indiscriminately. Some grow, some don’t, depending on where they fall. A  preacher (e.g., Jesus) is analogous to the sower; sometimes his words fall … Continue reading

My Twelve Hour Literary Career

I just returned from a writer’s conference in San Francisco (https://sfwriters.org/),  which was a decent conference with fairly high-level sessions, not Bonehead 101 as so many of them are. I had four days in the Mark Hopkins hotel at the … Continue reading

Underwhelmed by Smart Speakers

I bought a “Google Home” voice-activated speaker (VAS) that uses Google Assistant, a synthetic voice that answers questions. Google Assistant is comparable to Siri, Cortana, and especially Alexa, the persona on Amazon’s “Echo” line of voice-activated speakers. For all of … Continue reading