Articles The History of the Kilt 22 Apr 20131 Feb 2026 Time to pull another fun one from the archives! This article first appeared in issue #81 (November 2011) of Renaissance magazine. None of the photos here appeared in the magazine;…
Writing Finding buried treasure — that you buried! 13 Apr 20135 May 2023 It's a rather surreal experience. Here I am, going through a bunch of my writing archives looking for a book proposal template, and I stumble upon an old proposal from…
Books Censorship Talk at the Forum for Provocative Issues 8 Apr 20131 Feb 2026 Book burning in Nazi Germany. Click on image for description at "The History Place." The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution seems very straightforward when it says "Congress shall make…
Books BookLamp and the Book Genome Project 5 Apr 20131 Feb 2023 I was perusing BookRiot yesterday and came across a post entitled "12 Alternatives to Goodreads." This is a hot topic since the announcement that Amazon is acquiring Goodreads, and I…
Books Amazon buying Goodreads? Can’t we have anything nice? 29 Mar 20131 Feb 2023 The word is out. The biggest monopoly in the history of the book business is buying the biggest independent book review website. Most of what I'm reading about Amazon's pending…
Books… Myths & Legends of Tea 25 Mar 201331 Jan 2026 This is an early working concept for the book cover. The photo in the post header is what I ended up using for the final cover. Most writers don't like…
Books A few myths about banned books 11 Feb 20135 May 2023 This image was borrowed from Melville House, where it illustrates an article referenced later in this blog post. I just listened to an episode of the "Stuff You Should Know"…
Articles… The Wrong Way to Promote Your Book 26 Jan 201330 Jan 2023 I originally wrote this article for Writer's Weekly back in 2003. It can be seen in its original form on their website. I've placed it here on my blog because…
Education… Oh, boy! My book is a textbook! That’s good news, right? 14 Jan 20131 Feb 2026 When I wrote about this in 2011, I talked about rights reversion and what that means in an age of ebooks. Today, I'm having more of an issue with the…
