Thrillers are about characters who are in ‘terrible trouble,’ writes Dean Koontz. Peter Gray does appear to have cracked the thriller formula with Rough Cut, for on the very first page his character is indeed in ‘terrible trouble’. We are immediately drawn into the story of how Charlie Robertson came to be in that trouble …
John McPhee is one those writers with whom I feel I am never wasting a moment when I read him. Time spent with him is always a good investment. I first heard his name when I was sitting in a dining room on a cruise ship somewhere on our way to Alaska from San Francisco. …
Alibaba The House That Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark is a good case for why we should take a work on its merits and not push it too hastily into any particular genre or subgenre. This is indeed a story of the birth and growth of Alibaba. But it also shapes as a biography …
I so enjoyed watching the Australian Soccer team play France in Kazan in their first game of World Cup 2018. I visited Kazan in 2001 and remember it as a wonderful regional Russian city even then. The day after Australia played France, I heard sports commentator Francis Leach talking on the radio about how Kazan …
I tracked this work down seeking to gain clarification on a current project of mine. A book with the title of The Phenomenology of Autobiography: Making it Real sounded exactly like the book for me. The working title of my project is ‘Taiji: Use Mind and Not Force’. Having begun studying taiji health exercise in …
Along the Way, The Journey of a Father and Son, a co-autobiography by Martin Sheen and his son Emilio Estevez, was published in 2012. While it has a strong focus on the scripting, directing, acting and general activity behind the scenes of their 2009 collaborative movie The Way, an account of a father’s epic walk …
In the final analysis, this is a book review. But I also have to tell the story about how I found the author and the book. So it’s not any simple review. I have been reviewing a whole range of biographical writings lately as I prepare for my next project which is a personal account …
We indie authors believe all writers are created equal, that all writers are endowed with natural creative potential, and that writers have an unalienable right to exercise, explore and realize their potential through the freedom of publication. I hold these truths to be self-evident: I am an indie author I have experienced the pleasure and …
Here are some notes on a talk at UOW given in 2012 on the research into the writing of Splitting Apart. They were previously on a Tumbla blog but that has faded away. I’m reluctant to dwell in the past too much, but this was such a fun adventure I do want to share it. …