Author: jack

  • Confabulator Cafe

    I am contributing to a writing blog with a group of writers.  I will be posting on various writing topics every Monday.  Be sure to stop by and check it out.  There will be new, original content every day from a variety of writers. Check it out at http://www.confabulatorcafe.com  There is a lot of great…

  • Papa Pressure

    “There are three stages of a man’s life:  He believes in Santa Claus, he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus.” – Author Unknown When I was a child, I believed there was nothing that my father could not fix.  G.I. Joes, Hot Wheels, and all other items of importance were delivered into…

  • The Christmas Corps: A journal from the front lines.

    “A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.” – Napoleon Bonaparte  Welcome to the Christmas Corps.  Some of you volunteered for this mission, some were drafted by fate or dumb luck.  But here we are, joined by our solitary missions to bring Christmas to our loved ones.  There was stress,…

  • A Fisher of Hearts

    “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” – Matthew 4:19 My grandfather had died, quietly, in his sleep.  I sat in a wooden pew, awaiting the beginning of his funeral.  There was no organ, only the constant drone of the crowd.  My family had arrived early.  As I sat impatiently, my hands…

  • A Train Ride to an Unknown Stop

    “A great man is always willing to be little.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson The curse of living is not age, but the aging of those around you.  One by one, the flowers of your life, those who brought you the greatest color and beauty, whither and return to the Earth. You move on, not because…

  • Writing from a parallel universe.

    “Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.” – Walt Whitman I was mentioning to another writer this week how much I enjoy the use of parallels in fiction, particularly speculative fiction.  By parallel, I mean something that the reader can relate to their modern life, or the way the world currently…

  • Never let education get in the way of your kid’s learning.

    The only thing interfering with my learning is my education. – Albert Einstein. There is a fundamental different between teaching and learning that we seem to be missing in our society.  We have become statistic-driven.  Our children, both yours and mine, are statistics in the war of education.  Unfortunately, true learning has never been about…

  • Our Lost Humanity

    NOTE: I normally blog about writing and how it relates to life. However, I was so disgusted by what happened at Penn State this week that I could not help but blog my feelings. After all, in many ways that is what writing is about. In writing, we take life and distill it through words,…

  • The Need for Criticism

    To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. – Elbert Hubbard There are a few things that every writer should have.  When you get down to it, that is a pretty substantial comment.  Writing is largely individual and like many arts, is at least partially subjective.  That being said, there are things we…

  • Just In Case You Need a Reason to Write

    NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month for those who don’t do acronyms, is fast upon us.  This will be my first year taking part, but it appears to be an excuse for writers to spend inordinate amounts of time at their keyboards writing bad fiction as quickly as possible.  The goal is to write 50,000 words…