I’m back with more questions from blog readers. While I try to answer all questions individually, I also share some here occasionally. Q. In your Author Spotlight, you ask people if they are a plotter or a pantster, and I’ve also heard them refer to being a planster. I keep trying to figure out what […]
In the past, I’ve shared with you a series called Newspaper Days about my career publishing small-town newspapers in Arizona and on the Pacific Northwest coast. During that time, I interviewed quite a few celebrities who came to the towns where I published to perform at fairs and concerts, a number of politicians including presidential […]
In the past, I have shared a series of stories from my days publishing small town newspapers, from a job I had selling cars, about my time in the Army, and some tales of the offbeat adventures and misadventures I’ve gotten into in a series called Nick Happens. Now, I thought I would share some […]
In an effort to introduce my readers to other authors and their work, every week I run an Author Spotlight, sharing information about an author, their work, and how they go about writing their books. Jason Deas grew up in Georgia in the early 70s, when there weren’t hundreds of TV channels or the internet. […]
Food preparation has come a long way from back during my time in the Army in the early 1970s. Back then, an Infantry unit in the field usually lived on C-rations. Each individual meal contained a canned meat item, a canned fruit, bread or dessert. They also came with a B unit, which was an […]
Another blog post about my days publishing small town newspapers. One of the perks of running a small town newspaper is that you get first shot at some pretty good deals now and then. I’ve always been into guns, classic cars, and motorcycles, and the people working the front desk at all of my newspapers […]
His name was Dave, and the first time I met him I thought he was an old geezer. What hair he had left was white and he walked with a noticeable limp, aided by a cane. But there was nothing old about Dave. Not at all! His daughter was visiting from California and called my […]
The hardest part about writing the Tinder Street series is all the research that has to be done to get the historical events right. Actually, that’s not the hard part, that’s the fun part as far as I’m concerned. The hard part is that there are so many rabbit holes that I find myself going […]
Sometimes you live with something because it works, even if it’s not always convenient. I do that with the characters in my books. For each series, I have a list of the main and recurring characters, their physical traits, and a small bit of their history that I can refer to as I’m writing. That […]
Note: For some reason, some blog subscribers are not getting the pictures in today’s blog. If that includes you, please try this link https://www.gypsyjournal.net/2023/07/a-project-for-terry-2/ I started yesterday with a telephone interview with someone who is writing an article about going to school in Toledo, Ohio back in the so-called good old days, and she wanted […]
I started yesterday with a telephone interview with someone who is writing an article about going to school in Toledo, Ohio back in the so-called good old days, and she wanted to talk to me about my experiences as a student in junior high and high school, and also about the books in my Tinder […]
I’m back with more questions from blog readers about RVing, my writing activities, what’s happening in our lives since we hung up the keys, and all kinds of other things. While I try to answer all questions individually, I also share some here occasionally. Q. I know you guys sold your bus a long time […]
While we were in Tuscaloosa a couple of days ago, we stopped at PetSmart to pick up a couple of things, one of them an identification tag for Alli. They have a neat machine there called TagWorks, where you purchase a blank ID tag from several different styles, colors, and sizes to choose from. Once […]
Sometimes when people come to me for advice, I have to burst their bubble, as much as I hate to. Such was the case the other day when a neighbor stopped by to tell me about a book of poetry he had self-published a couple of years ago, asking me how he could get people […]
I’m sure we’ve all heard the old thing about telling a lie so many times you begin to believe it’s true. Apparently that also can happen when you tell a story in fiction often enough. Let me explain. My Tinder Street family saga is set in the Old South End of Toledo, Ohio. I know […]
We’ve all heard the saying that truth is stranger than fiction, and there’s no question about that. More than once someone has asked me if the oddball questions I get and sometimes share here are real. Oh yeah, they’re real. I don’t have the imagination to come up with some of the things people ask […]
I’m just like a bad rash. Just about the time you think you got rid of me, here I come again! The blog crashed sometime Saturday afternoon and people were getting an error saying that it couldn’t connect with the server and to please try again. I waited an hour or two and tried again, […]
One of the perks of running a small town newspaper is that you get first shot at some pretty good deals now and then. I’ve always been into guns, classic cars, and motorcycles, and the people working the front desk at all of my newspapers knew that if somebody came in wanting to place an […]
His name was Dave, and the first time I met him I thought he was an old geezer. What hair he had left was white and he walked with a noticeable limp, aided by a cane. But there was nothing old about Dave. Not at all! His daughter was visiting from California and called my […]
I thought it would take me several more days but I got at it hard yesterday and by dinnertime, exactly a month and a week after I started, the first book in my Tinder Street family saga series is finished. Before edits, it came in at 105K words. But as I said in yesterday’s blog, […]