Our snowblower crapped out on me after just two runs trying to blow nine inches of heavy, wet snow.   Figures.   My wife and I broke our backs shoveling the stuff for an hour and a half, all while that big, expensive snow blower sat there without any pretense of apology or guilt.   It remained, inoperative in the driveway, sportscar red in its nonrunning smugness.   I won’t deny it. I cussed. I swore. I moaned. I think, in some way, the pathetic whining helped to fuel my musc

This will get extremely controversial, so I apologize ahead of time for bringing up such a sensitive topic, but…   …I must maintain my strong belief that the 1984 production of A Christmas Carol  directed by Clive Donner and starring George C. Scott is the definitive and best version of the Dicken’s classic.   Now, I get it, right away, everyone will be wanting to counter with either 1992’s The Muppet Christmas Carol  or 1951’s version with Alastair Sim. I no doubt agree that

Of course I think about my parents during the holidays.   On each Thanksgiving, I think about how hard they worked to make Thanksgiving dinner for us. Their roles were traditionally split, with my father in charge of the meat and my mother in charge of the fixin’s.   My Dad would make his stuffing (each additional year measured by the additional salt and sage he’d add as his taste buds slowly withered and died). His greasy, turkey-grimed hands would stitch up the turkey, alwa

A Motto of Regret We were the wild bunch. The rabble-rousers. The risk-takers. The rebels of Regis High School. We weren’t nerds or geeks or outcasts. We weren’t popular. We were outsiders, and we were proud of that. While the jocks and popular kids simmered through their nights on the low flame of light beer and pop radio in someone’s basement, we were exploring abandoned sanitariums at the midnight hour on Folsom Street, or taking the First Avenue jump at 86 miles an hour t

Here’s your chance (actually, FIVE chances) to win one of my four books . I’m doing a book giveaway on the Friday after Thanksgiving to all my subscribers, so make sure you are subscribed to my newsletter before November 28 th . Five lucky people will get one free book of their choice from my titles.   U.S. audiences can choose between paperback or Kindle eBook. If outside the U.S., you can win a free Kindle eBook!   If you aren’t on my mailing list, make sure to submit your

October truly begins my favorite time of year. Autumnal shades, the cooling breeze, umber dusks, and the musky smell of seasonal change....

It was a drawerful of silverware that did me in.   That was Eighth Grade, and my delinquency was just a few years from its peak.  ...

We're sitting in a hotel bar in Minneapolis, having just stepped away from the Protospiel event we’re attending, which is a board game...

My wife and I recently spent a few days in southeastern Wisconsin. We were supposed to enjoy this trip with a friend of ours visiting...

It was a pleasant early evening in the middle of summer, about a half-hour before sundown. I was nine years old, tossing paper airplanes...

And, how it became the perfect song for Jack and Pauline from Shrugging. Around the time my wife Melanie and I were stepping away from...

Nail-biting. Overeating. Alcoholism. Drug abuse. Disorders that feel so good when one buckles under to those compulsive urges. Habits...

Here is the rough beginning to a story I poked at a while ago but never invested any time to finish—and probably will never finish? It...

The kitchen table had become the nexus of creation for my father. That’s where he’d put perfect penciled lines to a scrap of paper as he...

A cute little story I wrote many years ago...Enjoy. ... ‘O’ can be a very dirty little vowel, especially when a female voice is stringing...

“Here, read this,” my mother said and plopped a book down next to me. It was The Shining, by Stephen King. I was ten years old. A few...