Tom Swift Writer’s Notebook

I saw a few “ah”-inducing streaks in the sky early this morning. The show is supposed to be even better tonight (i.e., very early Friday morning), with a meteor a minute. That is, if it isn’t raining.

Belated snapshots from Atlanta:
• Sign in the airport: “Temporary Detour.” In the words of Col. Nathan Jessep, is there another kind?
• The hotel was great — and the service fantastic, maybe the best I’ve ever experienced — but it wasn’t far from a dubious part of town. The morning after I arrived, I walked by [...]

As I was preparing remarks for tomorrow’s panel, I read a quote from George Orwell that is not far off from my experience:
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one [...]

If I haven’t melted by Sunday morning, I will sit on a panel of Seymour Medal winners during the Society for American Baseball Research national convention. Here for additional details.

4:12 — Board plane.
4:14 — Pilot: We’re delayed at least an hour. Lightning in Tennessee. If I had a nickel …
5:38 — Pilot: We’ll take off any minute; waiting for clearance.
5:50 — Pilot: We’re next in line. Really.
5:53 — Lift off.
6:07 — Pilot: We’re going to Wichita and hanging a left. This will allow us [...]

Gather round, kids. Time to play a game. Name your favorite Tom Swifty and you might get a prize,* Tom said winningly.
* Thanks to friend and colleague Gary Smith for the tip.

My brother’s band was flown to Chicago over the weekend, where they played in the House of Blues. In order to reach the next round in this cross-country battle of the bands, they need you to vote early and often.
My name is Tom Swift and I approve this message.

A frightening memory from childhood: sitting alone in my room at night worrying that if the supernatural being who could read my thoughts did not approve of those thoughts He might sentence me to an eternity on a barbecue skewer. Oh, the guilt! (And we weren’t Catholic — or even all that religious.) So, although [...]

Good idea, Judith Shulevitz. I want at least one day a week of the “sweetness and the slowness” of which you speak.
But what does that mean? What should that mean? I don’t want rules because if I make rules, I’ll break rules, and when I break rules I feel guilt, which causes the very sort [...]

Yellow. Blue. Pink. Sky layered and light. Soft breeze — just enough to make a pot of flowers slowly dance. Two kids in the park across the street squeeze in the day’s last laughs. Final call for bird chirps. A small animal — was that a gopher? — scurries from tree to bush. My eyes [...]

So, apparently, there is a way to read blogs and web sites other than by visiting each of those blogs and web sites directly. That’s like so cool. What will they come up with next — a way to read those same blogs and web sites on your cell phone? Shut UP! And what do [...]

Quit Facebook and suddenly it becomes the only topic. On the street, people look at you funny. Funnier, I mean. They ask you Why? But you can tell they really want to ask you Are you going to move to a cabin in the woods to be closer to the squirrels who now presumably constitute [...]

As sure-fire candidate for future enshrinement in the National Worrier Hall of Fame (in Nut Plains, Conn.), I’ll admit I’ve never considered that my cause of death might be “summer storm.” Death by wood tick, yes. Death by stove-oven mishap, sure. But, while I have never stood in the thunderstorm with a golf club held [...]

For the first time since the George Bush I administration, I opened that leather-bound Bible that had been ceremonially placed in my hands all those years ago, back when I was a Thomas who not so much as doubted as resisted Sunday School weekly like some people resist power tools pressed to their flesh. There, [...]

My brother’s band released its first album with a virtuoso performance at the Fine Line last night and, without question, the guitarist stole the show (at least according to everyone at our table). Buying a copy — now available in CD and/or digital download — is as easy this.

I am happy to report that Chief Bender’s Burden is now available in paperback. If you are so inclined, you can purchase from your favorite bookseller. If that bookseller happens to be an independent, expect rare rewards in the afterlife.

You write a book and hope someone in the media will care. But you don’t get specific. No. You don’t say — even if the only noise in the room is a snoring dog and a whirring ceiling fan, you don’t so much as whisper the words — “Hey, maybe Minnesota institution Nick Coleman will [...]

The books editors at both the Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press have recently devoted column space to Minnesotans in Baseball, a collection of dozens of the most famous baseball players born or raised in the state. The book was edited by Stew Thornley, award-winning author, foremost historian of baseball in the North [...]

I know many well-adjusted human beings are and for a long time have been on Facebook, but it’s always seemed a little like fourth grade to me. That saying about mocking what we don’t understand comes into play here and although I’m not sure that I yet comprehend what it means, I am, alas, now [...]

Easily, without question, I got far more out of writing “Chief Bender’s Burden” than anyone will ever get from reading it. And the book only exists because I worked with an editor of rare patience, because I share my life with a woman of incomparable understanding, and because I belong to the Society for [...]