I watched Mickey’s Christmas Carol last night. As you may know, I’m something of a Christmas Carol connoisseur. I read it every single year on the five days leading up to Christmas. I love seeing different adaptations of it. My favorite is The Muppet’s Christmas Carol. Mickey’s is surprisingly good, though. For those who haven’t…
Asking what talent is may seem silly. It’s something we can all identify. Yo Yo Ma is a talented cellist. Shohei Ohtani is a talented baseball player. Kate Atkinson is a talented writer. Everyone knows these things. But what is talent? That’s a much harder that simply identifying talent. The internet defines talent as “natural…
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I listen to a lot of music. That includes lots of Christmas Music. For holiday music, I have jazz, blues, rock, gospel, country, pops, and klezmer. But I only have two classical albums. Another way of putting it is I have about 200 classical albums in my…
One of the hard parts of the holiday season is deciding what gifts to give everyone. Just this afternoon, I had a whole conversation with my aunt about what to get my kid for Christmas. I didn’t have a clue. I don’t even know what I’m getting him this year. We finally settled on a…
How many of you reread books? I certainly do. There are certain books that I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read them. Those are my comfort books. I bring this up because for the last year and a half, I have been unable to read. I think I read a total of three…
We’re two weeks away from the big day: Thanksgiving. You wouldn’t know it from going out and about in the world, though. Christmas is everywhere already. It’s November 14th and every store is decked out for Christmas. I’ve seen houses in my neighborhood with Christmas decorations up. All the commercials are for Christmas. What about…
Happy Thanksgiving season everybody. Hurrah, hooray, yippee, wahoo, it’s Thanksgiving time. It’s time to stuff your face with leftover Halloween candy, decorate your home with hand turkeys, and, most importantly, read Thanksgiving stories out loud, together, as a family. Hey, I just happen to know a Thanksgiving story that would be perfect for the occasion….
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to publish a book, traditionally and independently. Traditionally is probably what you think of when thinking about how a book comes to market. The author submits a manuscript to an agent or a publisher (Penguin, Houghton-Mifflin, Scholastic, etc.). If the agent likes it, they can shop it to the…
For those that never noticed and those who don’t remember, I have a book out. It’s called All We Need: The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn’t. It came out last November. Being a Thanksgiving book, that seems appropriate, but it didn’t give me much of an opportunity to push it very hard. Still, we sold some…
Did you know that if you didn’t like the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremonies, you’re a right-wing fascist? You’re illiterate and know nothing of history. If you didn’t like The Acolyte, you’re a racist, sexist incel. Don’t even get me started on those people who didn’t like Star Trek: Discovery. At least that’s what the internet…
