Nonfiction

Paradise Lost

19 May 2010

Thoughts on the challenges of creating a mystery-based on-going series in today’s connected world.

Authors are constantly asked where they get their ideas. The truth is, the best ideas are those we arenâ€™t looking for at the time. Theyâ€™re the kind which sneak up on us out of left field when we are reading or researching something else. When we have a specific task, then, we often look in unusual places for inspiration. Nonetheless, if I were given the task of coming up with material to adapt into a socially-relevant but still successful Broadway musical, Iâ€™m not sure I would start by researching obscure late-19th century German plays. Then again, Iâ€™m not Steven Sater or Duncan Sheik, creators of the Tony-winning rock musical Spring Awakening.

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Glorious food (Part 1)

11 March 2010

My reviews of Creolina’s Dixie Takeout, Captain Jim’s Seafood, Bagels and Company, and Heelsha.

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Prehistory

9 February 2008

My mother kept souvenirs of all sorts from all our family vacations. A while back my father and I came across a collection of program books and ticket stubs covering decades of family vacations, Among these questionable treasures was the 1971 Walt Disney World Preview Guide.

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El Orfanato

29 January 2008

“The Orphanage is dark, eerie, disturbing, suspenseful, and genuinely frightening, without resorting to cheap cinematic tricks or gruesome special effects.”

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Zodiac

16 January 2008

“It isn’t about the killer, or even the killings. It is an meticulous examination of the effects wrought on the lives of the people investigating the crime, both police and journalists.”

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Planchette

25 October 2007

Talking boards are best known under the popularized name Ouija boards, but are a tradition going back at least to the mid-1800s, and possibly thousands of years before that. Spiritualists used them to contact the dearly departed, but since the 1960s their primary use has been by wise-ass high school boys trying to scare the knickers off high school girls, or by writers using a popular culture shortcut to getting their evil phantasms on stage.

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3′s a crowd

20 May 2007

Quick review of Spider-Man 3

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Hurlant

21 January 2007

“I admit to a certain fascination with French science-fiction’s tropes: American cars, Egyptian gods, female assassins (and Nixon, although he doesn’t appear in this film).”

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