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, […]
In yesterday’s blog I said that today I would talk about our return trip from Ohio to Florida. But instead, I want to share some thoughts on veterans and Veterans Day. My family has a long tradition of military service. At least two great grandfathers that I know of were in the Civil War. Yes, […]
I have received quite a few questions about our trip to Ohio and thought I’d answer a few of them in today’s blog. Q. Why did you wait until it got cold up north to go up there instead of making the trip earlier in the year when it was so hot in Florida? A. […]
While I have had more success with my mystery books than I ever could have imagined, thanks to loyal readers like you wonderful folks, for a while now I have been toying with the idea of writing a family saga type series spanning several generations from the early 1900s through the Vietnam War. One reason […]
Many people believe that Memorial Day is a day for celebrating military veterans, but that’s not true. That’s what Veterans Day is for. On Memorial Day we honor the men and women of the Armed Forces who gave their lives for our country. Some of them died in battle, some died due to accidents or […]
Navy ships are about as common a sight as Starbucks coffee shops in Bremerton, Washington, thanks to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. On one of our visits there were three or four old aircraft carriers and a few other vessels painted Navy gray. But one ship, the USS Turner Joy, has a special place in […]
I have received a number of emails and messages wanting to know when my new John Lee Quarrels book, Sweet Tea And Jesus, will be out. It’s with the final proofreader and I expect to get back from her at any time. As soon as she does, I will make any final corrections she pointed […]
Some come alone, others bring their families, and some arrive in small groups. They come for many reasons. For some it is a place to remember. For others it is a place to heal. For everybody who comes here, it is a place to pay respect to those who made the ultimate sacrifice to their […]
When I was a teenager my father once told me that if you can find a job you love that you can’t wait to get to every morning, it doesn’t matter how much you get paid. I have been very blessed, because for most of my working life I have done just that. Something else […]
That’s the slogan of the men and women tasked with moving men and materials for the military, and since the Revolutionary War they have been doing the job using everything from covered wagons to aircraft to boats and railroads. On a visit to the United States Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis, Virginia yesterday we […]
When we woke up yesterday, the sky was looking pretty nasty, and the weather report said there was a good chance of thunderstorms. We decided that it would not be a good day to be kayaking. Rocky suggested that we visit the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in nearby Grand Rapids, and that sounded like […]
The world has lost a legend. Yesterday, broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite died at age 92. Long before cable television, CNN, and the internet, the world tuned in to CBS News every evening to hear the venerable Cronkite tell us what was going on in the world, and he gave us the news of some of […]
Our month in Tucson has gone by much too quickly, and we have not had the time to do half of what we had hoped to while we were here. We did get the chance to stop and visit with my uncle, Jack Compau, who is 84 and still holding his own. He’s slowed down […]