My Latest Posts

March Madness 2024 Edition!

It’s that time of year again, folks! March Madness brackets were just announced yesterday, and as usual, I’m running another blog bracket. This year, the prize is a signed Advance Reading Copy of my next book, A Family of Killers. That’s right! You’ll get to read this in print four months early. If that’s not incentive enough, you’ll also be able to brag to all your friends about how you were the best at something…

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Movie Review: Conan the Barbarian

I have long held the belief that up until Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, fantasy just never got a fair shake in cinema. I’ve watched quite a few earlier fantasy movies, and while some of them certainly made an effort at quality, too often they just ended up being far too cheesy to take seriously. In my head, I’d always assumed Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian would fall right into that same category, so…

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Movie Review: Wonka

Look at this! I’m reviewing a movie that’s not years and years old! I know, you’re shocked. In truth, I’m really feeling like I’d like to switch back to some movie watching again instead of series, though the trick is that I’m in the middle of a number of series, so I’m not sure when I’ll actually be able to switch. But anyway, on to the review. When I first heard about Wonka, I was…

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Oscars 2024 Review

Another year, another Oscars broadcast. Once again, we had a small movie-themed costume party, because what’s the point in having an event if you celebrate it a bit? MC went as Darla from Finding Nemo, Daniela was Katniss, Denisa was Julia Child, and I was Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) from Being John Malkovich (yes, it was a costume absolutely no one recognized. But I knew who I was, and that’s all that really matters.) The…

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My Favorite European Hotel Site

As I’ve been moving forward with my Scotland planning, it occurred to me today that it might be useful to let any of you who might be planning European vacations to know about my go-to site for finding hotels in Europe. Booking.com First off, I’m not getting any money from Booking for this post. I just find the site extremely useful and reliable, and I’ve gone to it for trips to Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary,…

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Having Fun the Right Way

For a long time, I’ve had this feeling that I’m not always having fun the right way. I know that sounds strange, but hear me out, because I think a lot of people fall into the same category. Let’s start with the easiest one to talk about: reading. I’ve talked with plenty of people who are apologetic about what they read. This might be because they like to read mysteries or Young Adult books or…

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Edinburgh Fringe Festival

So, as I’m planning our trip to Scotland, I’m finding one very big piece of information that’s pretty much affecting the entirety of the vacation: the Fringe Festival. If you’re like me and have been completely unaware of basically everything and anything related to Scotland, you no doubt have no idea what this is. Allow me to inform you. It’s one of the world’s largest art festivals, and it happens every year in Edinburgh for…

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Television Review: The Last Airbender Season One

My family just finished the first season of the new live action The Last Airbender on Netflix, and I was super impressed. For context, I’ve watched some of the animated show, but I didn’t finish it. (I can’t remember why. I think I struggle to finish entire animated seasons. I haven’t thought too much about the reasons behind that.) Also, what I did watch of the anime was years ago, so I had almost no…

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How Much Description Do You Like in a Novel?

As an author, I can’t help comparing my style with the style of the books I read as I read them. Yes, there are times when I get frustrated with a book because I feel like it could have written it better (being completely honest here), but there are times when I’m blown away and wonder if I could ever write that well. Of course, there are also plenty of times when I look at…

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Writing from Different Perspectives

A personal pet peeve of mine is when someone critiques a book by saying the author had no right to write from a certain point of view. Specifically, it’s the “men shouldn’t write about women” mantra that rubs me the wrong way, though I also feel the same way about other perspectives in general. There have been times when I have specifically ended up avoiding talking about something in a book simply because there are…

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