From the Blog…
Check out Shane’s latest thoughts from his blog.
The Reopening – what happens now?
The number of vaccinated are starting to outnumber those who are not sporting a punctured arm (or who refuse to get pricked). Very soon, if
Talking to Orwell about Book Reviewing
These days in retirement, I have idle talks with myself, and sometimes with famous literary personalities I wish I had met. This particular conversation was
There’s an App for That – even for Fiction
There’s an app for everything these days. For searching, shopping, information, books, car maintenance, home decoration, clothing, cooking, domestic help, medical care, even sex –
The Seven Rs of Pandemic Writing
Everyone is writing a pandemic journal, it seems. We all want to capture this lost time that will soon disappear (we hope) when the vaccine
Accepting Change
I have been wrestling with why, with all the resources available to us, this pandemic still rages, and now in Wave 2 (or is it
The Forces of Good and Evil Walk the Land
I wrote a novel twenty years ago in which the continent of North America was overrun by a giant flood, fragmenting it into smaller pockets
The New Divide
I remember wrestling with that age old conundrum called the Generation Gap when I was a teenager: we complained that our parents never understood us.
Releasing a Book During a Pandemic
“So, if you quit writing fiction, why are you releasing another novel?” my rational self asks me. “For God’s Sake, man!” this know-it-all-self erupts in
Why I Stopped Writing Fiction
I dug up my collection of writing since the end of February 2020 and it amounts to one short story, a sketch for a novel
Something is rotten in the state of …
From my cozy writing perch at the cottage window overlooking the deck, I look out upon the gently rolling waters of Lake Kashagawigamog, protected by
A Day in Our Pandemic Life
I’m trying to chronicle how a typical day in these Covid Times goes by. Let’s see, I wake up late, which is around 7.30 a.m.,
Pandemic Ponderings
Since we shut down our economy over a month ago, I’ve been watching each day go by with a sense of bewilderment and dismay. My
The End of the Empire of Greed
I have watched the last three weeks unfold with a sense of an ending and a suspicion of a new beginning. It started when I
Budapest – straddling the Danube
The train on this stretch from Vienna was modest compared to the other, longer ride from Berlin to Vienna: three-to-a-row seating in first class instead
Vienna – a city of palaces
A small city in what is now a small country (modern Austria’s population is 9M) which possesses the legacy of an empire many times its
Berlin – a tortured past and a creative future on display
I’d always wanted to visit Berlin, Vienna and Budapest. I had many invitations, and for one or more reasons they never panned out. This time,