This is the opening line of The Hunter by Richard Stark, which is a pseudonym of Donald Westlake, a giant of American crime fiction. I had picked up a copy at the recommendation of my friend Seth Harwood. It’s one heck of a book. I was not disappointed. Stark gives the reader very little in […]
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A Study in Scarlet
“Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when […]
The Cedar Forest of Gilgamesh
The ancient Near East was the home of the first recorded human civilization. From this civilization, we have been gifted with the Epic of Gilgamesh, which details his hero’s journey and was written during the late 2nd millennium BC. In its oldest iteration, the story is nearly four-thousand years old. The Epic of Gilgamesh is […]
The Rules of Writing
As I begin my sixth month of thesis work, I realize how many tricks of the trade that I use daily which have come from both authors and mentors, from both reading and writing. At Northeastern University Joe DeRoche told me to never use an exclamation point because “If your prose isn’t exciting enough then […]
Halloween Stories
Halloween is a fantastic time for reading, re-reading, and watching stories that frighten us in some fashion. Two of my favorites are steeped in New England imagery and folklore. I re-read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow each October. Written by Washington Irving, the tale recounts the encounter between school teacher Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, who […]
And So it Begins.
By the time I was seventeen, I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom each night, pounding away on a turquoise electric typewriter that I had borrowed from a neighbor two years earlier. Clickety-clack, rattling, and clattering. The sound of the keys was a steady beat as I tried to capture the ideas in […]
