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My father had a stroke in early 2025. Luckily, he made a nearly complete recovery but the event caused me to think about the past and our relationship over the years. Memories returned of my childhood, the person I had been and the things I had done. These recollections reminded me of a few rough chapters I had written two years earlier about a boy and the misdeeds he committed with three friends. I had typed those chapters and forgotten about them—until Dad had his stroke. L

This image is highly relevant to The Bad Kids. It is also AI. "You don't need to be a brand, you need to be findable." That was a suggestion from the AI platform I am utilizing and it opened my mind up. I loathe "marketing," "being a brand," and so this has been invaluable. AI is the Internet thirty years ago. There is potential for positive input in our lives, there is the potential to waste it as we have with the Internet (Tide pod challenges, anyone?). Many of us are lonel

I am currently creating promotional material for my upcoming book The Bad Kids . This will be the first in a series of memoirs I will be releasing. I am going to create videos using AI generated photographs of people and objects relevant to the story. The picture below the title of this blog is a recreation of my friends and I circa 1981. Dave and Roy are pretty much spot on though I ended up more handsome than I actually was. Same with Rich, he also had a bigger nose. The pr

This picture is AI created. My prompt was "Evil Don Knotts" As my new book The Bad Kids gets closer to publication I have to plan its promotion. Part of marketing a book is creating videos. I do not possess the skill to do this nor do I have the money to hire another artist; this is where AI comes in. This is a difficult subject for me as I am certain it is difficult for other people who write and have books to promote--- Using AI affects the livelihood of someone else in th

I have a dream, maybe it's an odd one: I want to live in a bookstore. My desire would be to find commercial space in a small, rural town. Could be a shop in a building, could be a former gas station, as long as it has some sort of bathroom*. You walk in the front door and there's an open area. This could be for (local) art showings. I'd have local art on the walls, taking a small commission from the sales. Beyond the open space are the shelves of books. I'd source them from a

So...I got off the bus a few minutes after midnight last night. I live on the border of Old Town and the Pearl here in Portland, you see a lot of tents on the sidewalks, a lot of people on the cement without tents. Last night there was some guy crashed out a few feet away from the entrance to our building. Some people would be inclined to get some water, toss it on the guy, and snarl "This isn't a KOA, move on, motherfucker." Some people would be inclined to go up to their ap

The Dickens quote everyone uses is "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It is overused because it is perfect: Balance. Yin and Yang. Trade offs. We want a job with less stress so we accept less money; that path leads to more freedom but less security...(whatever security means in 2025). I just turned 58 and live in a 325 square foot apartment. I don't have a pension or any sort of retirement--- But I have what I really want, three days in a row off to work

A couple of weeks ago my father asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I said a sleeping bag; that was, literally, the only thing I wanted. If you asked me today what I want I’d say nothing. I have everything I want. Maybe not everything I desire , but everything I want. I desire more guitars, books, and clothes, an old Volvo station wagon, but those are fantasies. That’s what a desire is, a fantasy, a daydream. A want , on the other hand, is something you actually need. My

I need to escape one thing in this life: My fear. I will be another year older in four days; I carry too many things on my shoulders. Perhaps you do, as well. The biggest thing most of us carry is fear. It's in a large, dark sack we sling over our shoulders as we move from day to day. It rattles in there like cheap cook pans. Sometimes the rattling sounds like laughter; our fear mocking us. Every blog should have an SEO friendly title, fuck that. I have spent decades cowed in

We have shootings, but nothing extraordinary for a medium sized American city. We have a transient crisis, scores of the mental ill and...

This is the Channeled Scablands Washington

Is ego a trap...or is the superstructure holding things together? What is the importance of identity? We certainly embrace labels:...

The Passenger is the story of an explorer who finds himself in a strange, new world that he must adapt to and make his home. After a...

I am not as bold as I used to be. Back when I was on the road in Pandette, I was more fearless about camping wherever in the middle of...

I re-read Into the Wild , the story of Chris McCandless. For those who haven't read it, it is the story of an idealistic young man who...

I meant what I said about being on a break from the regular Tuesday posts, but from time to time I may post something unrelated to any of...

This blog is marketing tool, it is meant to raise awareness of (and hopefully sell!) my books. I spend $35 a month on this website and my...

In a world going to the dogs, you can’t be surprised when someone howls in pain. If we all decided to get along, work together, then...

I am going to be traveling tomorrow so I am putting up the weekly blog one day early... Last night, front desk called at 10:30: There was...

When we are younger, rare is it that we truly know ourselves. There is an idea of what we want in life, but all too often these wants...