Month: March 2026

Thank God It’s Monday 7

I try to post on Sundays. I wasn’t able to post yesterday, so today’s effort will be a bit longer.

Literary scammers continue to target me. The pace of incoming emails has increased, which I attribute to the war in Iran. The scammers’ language often sounds like something a Donald Trump fund-raiser would say:

“Your book will be displayed across our platform and listed as an invited title on our website, which receives up to 1.7 million visits every year.”

“Your book collection caught our attention and passed our review process with distinction.”

Today I received two messages from organizers of global book clubs with tens of thousands of members:

Elaine Louise, Literary Adviser and Book Selection Specialist for “The Elite Book Club,” invited me to be part of their “Spring 2026 Global Spotlight.” “Our readers specifically highlighted how your work captures the kind of emotional resonance we look for as we head into this season of renewal.” Tell them that in Tehran, Beirut, and Kiev.

And Sherry Organiser, Organiser of “THE Book Club (TBC),” also wants to hook up. “Our readers are deeply interested in stories that explore complex characters, moral dilemmas, and thought-provoking themes, exactly the kind of discussion your writing inspires.”

Sherry Organiser is a good name, but not as good as the scammer who signed one as Fanbase. And how many of you are members of book clubs that report up a ladder to people who control book clubs?

The only new wrinkle lately was an invitation to spend a base fee of $1,100 on audio book production (they don’t usually mention money right away) and a note from the “Literary Bureau” telling me how much they love my book. Which, as readers around here know, I haven’t finished. It seems that this book I haven’t finished, which they claim to have read, “closely matches the types of stories currently being explored for potential screen adaptation.” Wow!

They like my book so fucking much—you know, the one I haven’t finished and that they claim to have read—that they asked me to send them a copy so they can review it because they already fucking loved it. “If the project appears to be a good fit, we may then invite you to present your work and discuss the story further in a Zoom interview with a Netflix representative.”

As Margaret Atwood said recently, these scams are cruel. They take advantage of people’s hopes and their lack of understanding about publishing. It’s spam, my friends. Delete it. And pray for peace.

Some art now, please

Right. A book I thought was about steam railroads turned out to be black-and-white glam shots of steam locomotives, most of them captured in full throttle. I can only handle so many smoking wedgies. Soon I was ripping the book apart. Turns out that book paper from 1960 takes ink perfectly.

Sometimes you lift the stamp and you see the image is incorrectly placed. Sometimes you lift the stamp and it’s perfect.

Too bad the brakeman on the back porch isn’t more visible, but I love his expression.

Thank God It’s Monday 6

If you decide to make a career out of defacing postcards, you don’t have to confine yourself to antique cards with a paper finish. You can always stamp modern postcards, which have a shiny, slick surface. Collectors call these cards “chromes,” short for Kodachrome.

Caption on the back: “A Washington state ferry navigates Harney Channel in the San Juan Islands.”

The ink on a modern postcard (or a photograph) will never completely dry, though you should be able to color it with markers after a few weeks.

This baseball player is a particularly useful little guy. Here he is on a card from the 1920s:

He’s also good for standing upside down, dancing like no one is watching, holding onto objects while being blown sideways, and chasing through space.

Say yes to your opportunities. You never know who is listening.

Loyal readers (all three of you) know that I finished the first draft of my novel last October. I waited a couple of weeks, then spent several days at the library reading my masterwork and ducking out for coffee. I finally handed the manuscript to two readers I trust:

William, who is a friend and a veteran book reviewer.

Deborah, who is a veteran wife.

While they chewed through the text, I inspected all the wreckage I’ve abandoned over the years. I turned a 900-word fragment into a 10,000-word story. I guess something clicked. I took a sledgehammer to a 2,000-word conglomeration of plot lines and now it’s one plot and 5,000 words. An old story caught my eye and I made it shorter. Writing a novel may have unhinged me, and several managers from my past might attest that I was not particularly hinged to start with.

My readers gave me invaluable feedback. My book reviewer friend wrote his as a book review—my first! And yet, I knew it would be a good idea to find a reader who wasn’t my friend and wasn’t my wife. Someone who wouldn’t hold back because they never had to see me again.

Readers, I found her.

A flyer appeared in our coffee shop from an editor looking for clients…a week or two after I wrote about a son recalling his mother’s advice: “Say yes to your opportunities. You never know who is listening.”

(Note: I loved my mother and my mother loved me, but this is not something she would’ve said. Opportunities carry risk and risk made her nervous. She was more likely to suggest I zip my jacket because it’s cold.)

After some back and forth on email, I learned that the person behind the flyer—to preserve her privacy, I’ll call her Maxwell Perkins—was a college student pursuing a career in publishing. I worked for a newspaper and I’ve observed many editors, and I know that how you communicate with your writers is half the battle. You can send Ms. Perkins up to the majors, because she has nothing left to learn at this level.

I hired her to read my book. Actually, I was going to put her off until I had returned to the first draft and revised it into the second, but Deborah informed me that I was—what’s the word? Oh yes. WRONG.

Three weeks later, my new editor sent me her 5,000-word critique and a Google doc with 177 comments on my manuscript.

I have plenty of work ahead of me, but this is revision and revision is the fun part. This is going to be a much better book. Thanks to Deborah, William, and Maxwell Perkins.

Thank God It’s Monday 5

Sometimes I can’t think of what to do to a particular postcard and sometimes the rubber stamp jumps from its drawer and says “Pick me! Pick me!” These 1920s views of the U.S. Southwest are plentiful and painterly. They are fun to stamp because they usually give you a vast expanse of sky to play with.

Looks like an economics chart. This unfortunate lady is heading for the intersection of a supply and demand curve!

A splendid little war

Of all the wars, police actions, regime changes, and interventions to protect American lives and property that this country has jumped or been dragged into, the Spanish-American War still carries a bit of a shimmer. Words and names from this conflict cling to our national consciousness:

“Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain,” Teddy Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, Teddy Roosevelt and the charge up San Juan Hill, yellow journalism, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” probably Teddy Roosevelt again, and the quote I’m using as my title.

Nevermind that the war barely lasted the summer of 1898 and killed hardly anybody. Hardly any Americans, that is, not counting the 2,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors who died from tropical diseases.

Nevermind that the battleship Maine was not a battleship and that analyses over the decades can’t decide whether the ship struck a mine or if a fire in the coal bunker set off an ammunition magazine.

Nevermind that the Spanish navy, which the yellow press warned would bombard U.S. cities on the East Coast, during the war could barely sink a rowboat and in fact I could’ve beaten their armada with my own rowboat and a couple dozen bags of weighted chess pieces.

Nevermind that the people we liberated from Spanish tyranny in the Philippines objected to living under American tyranny and instead launched a four-year rebellion (in this country known as the Philippine Insurrection, because obviously the Filipinos were in the wrong).

And nevermind that President McKinley, after failing to negotiate a compromise with Spain, asked Congress for the authority to go to war.

Kiss me, I’m a pedophile

Now we’re at war with Iran, a country nobody likes. Iran represents a threat to the United States that is so terrible that when we started bombing them, they struck back at…their neighbors. They can’t actually reach the United States, unlike Russia, China, and North Korea. I notice we’re not bombing any of them.

I also don’t know why Trump loves the Iranian people, hates the Ukrainian people, and loves people in his own country only if they voted for him.

Trump’s call for the Iranian people to rise up and take back their country reminds me of George W. Bush’s statement about the Iraqi people: “When they stand up, we’ll stand down.” That worked brilliantly.

So the bombing of Iran seems to me to be Trump’s attempt to get everyone to stop talking about the sluggish economy, the mass layoffs, affordability, ICE’s ideas on how to carry out the teachings of Jesus, bribery, extortion, money shoveled at billionaires, and, of course, the Donald Trump Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Files.

Perhaps someday, when the smoke clears and Iran is a rainbow-covered paradise of unicorns who shit gold coins and Twinkies, when the Chairman of the Board of Peace receives his Nobel Peace Prize for his innovative solution to bringing peace to the smoking craters that constitute much of the Middle East, he can declare a National Pedophilia Day to honor the brave sacrifices of all the wealthy white men across this fair land.

The rainbows, of course, will not mean that anyone wants gay people around.

Back to my so-called writing career next week. Unless the crypto-currency market crashes and Trump decides to bomb something else.