As I sat down to write a eulogy to my mother who recently passed away, I scratched my head trying to find the many accomplishments in her life. On the surface, I came up with, “She was a devout Catholic, married at age 21, raised four children, was a homemaker who never worked outside the
I remember when social media sites were first set up. They invited us to join for free, to exchange messages, pictures and other snapshots of our lives with friends scattered far and wide over the planet. When I signed up for Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads, I thought this was an excellent way of keeping in
Hooked on the Social Media Drug Read More »
Someone told me that I would find inspiration to finish my new collection of short stories if I went to Ireland. So I did, spending three days in Dublin, a day in Belfast, and a week at a writer’s retreat, Anam Cara, on the Beara Peninsula of County Cork. Apart from doing the tourist thing
A Self-Directed Literary Tour of Ireland Read More »
Are there non-starving writers? Yes, there are. The old cliché of the “starving writer” needs to be dusted off. There are all kinds of writers these days, and only a few of them are starving. Who are these “other types” and what shapes and sizes do they come in? Okay, let me have a go.
Are there Non-Starving Writers? Read More »
There used to be a time when the faintest whiff of violence or social disorder would send people into a panic: schools would shut down, airports close, tourist facilities dry up, travel agents go out of business, and red alerts seal off national borders. Today all that is ho-hum, business caries on as usual; let’s
Dulling of the Senses to Violence Read More »
Hard to imagine, but what if these behemoths of data went belly up? Sure, a few banks might fail, a few cities go bankrupt, perhaps even a few countries; a whole bunch of employees would be made redundant, and that vast treasure trove of data would be on the auction block. It’s the data that
What if Goodreads, Amazon and Facebook went out of business? Read More »
I was reflecting on these industries that reside south of the border that are constantly threatening to move north like a fleeing refugee, and wondered whether they aren’t built on the most oxymoronic of business models. Let’s take private prisons first. The aim of society is to produce as few felons as possible, and where
Private Prisons & Private Medicine Read More »
I’m getting ready for when drones will dot the sky and obliterate the little sunshine we have these days. It’s a magical time to be alive, also a nightmarish one. Just think to when the technology has been perfected so that drones can transport goods and deliver them safely to consumers. The big trucks will
Drones for Company Read More »
I have always felt boxed in by the definition of “genre” when it comes to writing fiction. Why be bound by the rules of a craft when that craft itself is in a state of evolution, and where tomorrow’s rules may be today’s exploratory scribbling? When I sat down to compile my new short story
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This is a place that has long been on my bucket list, and I finally went. I went with my wife not as a fat-cat tourist to soak up the artificial and luxurious world of Seven-Mile beach north of George Town, but to rent an apartment in the more modest settlement of Bodden Town (formerly
Hey man, it’s Cayman! Read More »