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Recent Posts
- Aliens Among Us: Probing Hillbillies and Freaking Shut-ins, How Netflix’s “Encounters” and Hulu’s “No One Will Save You” Prep Us for the Coming Alien Apocalypse, Kind of
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- “Bobcats, Bobcats, Bobcats”: Animal Life and a Tribute to “Modern Family”
- “The North Water”: This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Moby Dick
- Day 25: On David Quammen's "Spillover": Terrific Book That Foretold Our Pandemic, Kind of
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Category Archives: The West
"The Lousy Adult" Coming Soon to a Bookstore Near You (If There's One Left: "Online Shopping, Anyone?")
So I’ve been neglecting this blog of late, working to finish a first draft of a new novel, one that involves a woman holding a teenage boy hostage, some experimental sex-drug studies, and other various mischief, but advance copies of … Continue reading
Posted in books, The West
Tagged Book Reviewing, Fiction Writing, Good Fiction, The Lousy Adult, The West
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On Being in the Center of Everything, With a Nod to the Master, Vladimir Nabokov
So I’ve just returned to my home in State College, Pennsylvania, a name that must rank high on a list of Least Imaginative Monikers, but it does have an odd distinction: It’s (more or less) exactly in the center of … Continue reading
Posted in Art, books/film, The West
Tagged Book Reviewing, Fiction Writing, Good Fiction, Photography, The Bird Saviors, The West, Vladimir Nabokov
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Encounter With a Lawman in Kent Haruf's Fiction Country: Hats Off to Sheriff Ken Putnam
So I’ve just driven 900+ miles to reach the (shopping mall) mecca that is St. Louis, Missouri, and leaving Colorado I was tooling along at the wheel of my ultracool Subaru Forester (well, let’s say it’s nicely functional, which isn’t … Continue reading
Posted in books/film, Cormac McCarthy, The West
Tagged Book Reviewing, Coen Brothers, Cormac McCarthy, Fiction Writing, Good Fiction, Kent Haruf, The West
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Goodbye, Colorado, With a Great Horned Owl Sendoff
So it’s not exactly Phillip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus, but yesterday, after a summer of writing/backpacking/river-rafting, I had to leave my beloved Colorado home to head back East, and it was a hectic packing morning. I was rushing about, filling bags … Continue reading
Posted in Birding, books/film, The West
Tagged Birding, Book Reviewing, Good Fiction, Owls, The Bird Saviors, The West, Wildlife photos
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Back From Beyond: On Miles and Miles of the Ridiculous Names of RVs
So for most of July I’ve been traveling in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming, rafting the Green River in Utah and then backpacking in Yellowstone, which was all lovely and adventurous, but going from place to place was a drive nearing … Continue reading
Rafting the Green River & Digging for Trilobites: What We Do in the West
So I haven’t been blogging for a while because I’ve been manning the oars of a white water (well, sometimes brown, green, or just a little frothy) raft in central Utah, the 84-mile stretch of the Green River from Sand … Continue reading
Guest Blog Post on Dan Bloom's "CliFi" Blog
So I have a guest blog post/interview on Dan Bloom’s “CliFi” blog today, here. As I mention in the post, I’m working on a novel set during a catastrophic wildfire, and there’s one going on right now west of where … Continue reading
Posted in Birding, books, Climate Change, The West
Tagged Climate Change, Fiction Writing, Good Fiction, The Bird Saviors, The West, Wildfires
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Review of Kent Wascom's "The Blood of Heaven," Plus a Mission Debrief
So my review of Kent Wascom’s impressive debut novel, The Blood of Heaven, appears today in the Dallas Morning News, here. It’s a rollicking book, and I have to say I keep thinking of that Hatfields & McCoys miniseries whenever … Continue reading
On "The Road," Choking on Smoke
So I’ve owned a house in southern Colorado for ten years, and during that time have seen our summer weather go up and down, some years wet and some years dry, only it always seems to be trending toward hotter … Continue reading
On Kent Haruf's "Benediction," Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" and the Colorado Fires, Again
So this post should be a candidate for some kind of parlor game like “Try to pinpoint the logical connection (though there may not be one)”: I finished Kent Haruf’s Benediction, which includes a scare at the end (I won’t … Continue reading