This weekend I finished reading a great little book called “A Curious Mind” by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman. It’s told from the perspective of Grazer, who is a well-known and successful producer associated with director Ron Howard and Imagine Entertainment. He attributes all of his successes to the simple fact of being curious, and … More A Thousand Paths to NO
A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman. Simon & Schuster. 320 pages. I previously finished reading a 900-page novel that became ponderous in the last few hundred pages, so it was a delight to pick up this smaller book. And even though Amazon says it clocks in … More Review: “A Curious Mind” by Brian Grazer
The longer I write, the more time I seem to take before I actually start putting words on paper. That time is spent running through the storyline time and again, trying to get what happens straight in my head. It’s important for me. Some writers talk about sitting down the day after the finish their … More The Bare Bones of Storytelling
I find myself watching “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy again, from beginning to end. I’ve watched it countless times, and before they were films, I counted myself among the thousands of fans of the books. For me, the Trilogy stands as one of greatest set of books ever written, especially considering that it really … More The Call of the Master Craftsman
My last blog followed the title of “Things We Don’t Talk About,” and mentioned politics and religion as those things that one doesn’t discuss in polite company. There’s a reason for that. People take sides. People get emotional. I was just on Facebook and just about every post on there took one position or another … More The Elephant/Donkey In The Room
When in polite company, the old saying goes, you don’t discuss religion or politics. That’s the way I was raised, and there was a very good reason for that. There have been many times since when I wished people would obey this rule and mind their own business about who they were voting for or … More Things We Don’t Talk About
The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer from the people who’ve lived the longest by Dan Buettner. National Geographic. 336 pages. I can’t remember exactly where I heard about this book, but somewhere in my travels they mentioned that there was a book out there that isolated pockets of population around the world that … More Review: “The Blue Zones” by Dan Buettner
Despite all evidence to the contrary, I am not a believer in ghosts. When my father died in 1993, my older half-brother came to the funeral and talked about having my dad come and visit him at his bedside. I had no belief that would happen to me, simply because I believe that when I … More Ghost Story
A few weeks ago, I was invited with several other faculty members from our university to an advance screening of “Hacksaw Ridge,” the sensational film about Medal of Honor winner Desmond Doss that was directed by Mel Gibson and which comes out in November. On the way there and back, I had the pleasure of … More Getting Paid, Part II
I am the faculty sponsor of the Rough Writers, the student creative writing club here at Southwestern Adventist University. We’re pretty open and loose about what people can bring to the group to be critiqued, and inevitably there is at least one or two writers in the group whose favorite genre is fantasy. Many would-be … More When Nonfiction Becomes Fiction…and Vice Versa
The Great Adventure 