Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 101 entries, all of them here in full.
August 17, 2006 · 980 words
Creamy
Thoughts on the work-in-progress: Having tantalized my future readers for three whole chapters with a main character who, while participating in a considerable amount of action, has so far failed to inform anyone (least of all the reader) what he’s thinking or hoping to accomplish, the time has come for him to put his
Read entry →August 15, 2006 · 396 words
Fit For A King
The other night we had a meal that was pure accident and pure wonderful. I happened to be at the Ta Lin Asian market, where you can buy large numbers of whole fish, many of which are too vast for our two-person household, let alone our oven. On impulse, I came home with a striped […]
Read entry →August 15, 2006 · 54 words
Amazon Got Tanks
Amazon sells armored vehicles. With 400-watt sound systems and underbody lighting, no less. These are viewed by the same people who view Russian beluga caviar and “inflatable party sheep.” The reviews are pretty positive. I want one, just so I can see the looks on the faces of the people who bought Hummers.
Read entry →August 9, 2006 · 375 words
Insulting Turkishness
You’ve been reading here about the up side of Turkey. The wonderful sights, the culture, the hospitality. So here’s an article on the flip side. Not content with last year’s aborted prosecution of the author Orhan Pamuk, Turkish fascists have chosen another target, Elif Shafak, whose The Bastard of Istanbul won the Bes
Read entry →August 3, 2006 · 5,865 words
Log of the Eclipse (11)
3 April, 2006 Wonders of the World The early morning view from the hotel balcony was inspiring. The divinely blue Aegean that heaved in great foaming surges against the intriguing cavern just below in the rocks. The craggy coastline, the picturesque village, and the island of Delos across the channel, its outline tinte
Read entry →August 2, 2006 · 60 words
Two Weeks, Seven Minutes
My friend, the brilliant designer Erick Wujcik, has sent me this link for the winner of the Shanghai Short Film Festival. Participants were given only two weeks to make a movie seven minutes long. Okay, there are problems with the ending, and some of the sound needs fixing. But given the constraints imposed on the [&he
Read entry →July 30, 2006 · 2,069 words
Log of the Eclipse (10) (All Over Again)
I’m reloading this installment of the Turkish trip because I found that one of the links— in fact the most crucial link— wasn’t working. So now, when you click to look at the Neolithic goddess, you’ll actually get a picture of the Neolithic goddess described in the text, and not something else. Frankly, you
Read entry →July 27, 2006 · 164 words
Them!
You know, giant insects never really scared me. What scares me is lots of little insects. This brings me to this article from a Montgomery paper describing the giant yellowjacket nests sprouting up throughout the South, so big they swallow cars and furniture. ‘The largest nest Ray has inspected this year filled the int
Read entry →July 26, 2006 · 139 words
Skunk Works
Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works, which created such aircraft as the U-2, the SR-71, and the F-117 Stealth Fighter, has created yet another masterpiece. According to this article in New Scientist Tech, Lockheed-Martin’s new unmanned stealth vehicle Polecat was created largely with a CAD hooked up to a 3D printer—
Read entry →July 18, 2006 · 997 words
Objectivity
I’m working on a new novel, Implied Spaces, and have surprised myself with a discovery. Toward the end of the first chapter I noticed that I was writing in the Third Person Objective point of view. Which, for those of you who don’t obsess about these things the way writers do, means that I was […]
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