Tom Swift Writer’s Notebook

Since we returned, the days have passed double time. Seems like only yesterday it was last week — when I received a make-your-day note from playwright and poet Marcie Rendon alerting me to a flattering review. Writes Dwight Hobbes: “Too bad baseball’s Hall of Fame doesn’t have a Most Valuable Book category. Tom Swift’s biography [...]

As I pulled into the post office annex I noticed something I normally wouldn’t: a guy whacking weeds.
Usually, when I’m in the car I flip on the mind’s auto responder. The garbage truck. The jogger. The billboard. I pass them without much thought on the way to the gym, the library, the post office. But [...]

Seventy years after The Long Valley was published I picked up a reprint from a place that won’t soon be confused with Salinas for what couldn’t have been much more than the price readers paid in 1938. When I read stories, I mark the ones that give the most pleasure. After I finished this collection [...]

For a number of years Charles and Marie Bender shared a house (pictured) with one of Charles’ sisters, Emma, and Emma’s daughter from a marriage that ended in divorce. Emma’s ex-husband later remarried and had a son. Last week, I learned that those two offspring, the half sister and brother — people who had lost [...]

I like learning about how great writers work. I also like learning about people who live on the margins. This means I would, eventually, square my eyes on Charles Bukowski.
Even so, I had expected a different DVD to arrive in the mail than the one that turned up this week. But then anything generated by [...]

People often ask about the satisfaction of publishing a book and the answer has never been easier. I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again: the best reward — more than any positive review and, certainly, more than any monetary gain — has been the gracious reaction from people in different corners of [...]

It’s not the plot. Set in the days, months and years following 9/11, Netherland is the story of a man whose wife leaves him (eventually they reconcile for reasons that do not inspire) and whose friend is murdered. There’s also a lot of cricket.
It’s not the characters. Hans, the narrator, is from Holland by way [...]

I hadn’t read a word of Tobias Wolff. And I don’t usually enjoy read-alouds. But the twain met, twice, in recent weeks as Wolff read stories on bookish shows I happened to catch. It was his voice — the way his speaking carried his written — that aroused my interest. So I added him to [...]