This is a text conversation with a client today:   Brian Ackley is great! He surely is. He’s been on my writer roster for years. Excellent and sensitive writer with a fantastic client service attitude. He IS…I feel fortunate to have him, he’s different, if you know what I mean, and I love that ..read more

Writing inspiration: There are various ways to be inspired. This cartoon, “Shoe,” was published on June 10, 2024. Cosmo Fishhawk is a reporter for the Treetops Tattler, but he’d rather be napping at his messy desk. For your amusement, here is the toon!     I know I haven’t posted in this blog in quite a while. I’ve been really busy with marketing this business as well as helping a lot of new clients. It’s consumed a lot of my time. With any luck, I’ll have more free time soon.   Source ..read more

I was nearly done reading a magazine about the world’s best whiskeys when I came upon this. I began laughing, and I was stone cold sober (I seldom drink). Are you a writer? Married to a writer? Are you a wannabe writer? Do you have a writer friend? Hop on over to Total Wine & More, swipe the gold card and pick up a bottle of this fine Irish whiskey. A perfect gift. Unless they don’t drink at all. You’re welcome.   Source ..read more

  I’m watching The Sopranos for the fifth time. The legendary HBO series ran from 1999 to 2007. For me personally, it was really funny stuff, but then I’ve been known to laugh at funerals…. The final episode ended unexpectedly suddenly. You may recall that the New Jersey-based Soprano family was gathering at Holsten’s restaurant for a meal. Tony looks up then the screen suddenly goes to black. No sound. Then the credits roll. I remember checking my cable connection and cussing a lot. Apparently, millions did the same thing. Speculation centered on the white guy in the Members Only jacket ..read more

There is a stereotype out there about writers. They’re talented and frustrated and hit the bottle way too often. Maybe the reason some talented writers are frustrated and drink to excess is because of what they’re asked to write. Example:     Source ..read more

Fun and games with SEO, which stands for: Search Engine Optimization. Every business website owner has received an email like this: Hi, I was visiting sites today and suddenly I came across your site. (ghostwords.com) I like the interface of your site very much.I did more research . Before researching I was expecting your site must have traffic in thousands or in millions but Also it was not.After watching your site seo stats I feel I should give you advice.I have some tips and tricks about your site ranking related. I have something special for your site traffic. Please let me know if you ..read more

  You know how much I love great writing. I got a big surprise when I found an old autobiography on Amazon by the late, great John Houseman. The surprise is: The man was a spectacularly great writer. The book is Unfinished Business; the paperback was published in 1988 by Columbus Books, Ltd. Below, you’ll find a sample from pages 340 and 341. This book is about 480 pages. Who is John Houseman? He was a theatrical director and producer, and film producer. He also did some acting. In the USA, his most memorable movie role was in The Paper Chase from 1973, in which he played a brutal profess ..read more

“Get out of the chair. Go have a drink. I’ll do the writing.”   I recently read an article about how A.I. was supposed to reduce the workload of those in the world of writing. Instead, literary magazines have been inundated with A.I.-generated stories. Get this: Same story, the title changes somewhat with each copy, different writer names, different email addresses, character names change. According to the New York Times…. “The deluge has become so unmanageable that Neil Clarke, the editor of Clarkesworld, said that he had stopped accepting submissions until he could get a better handle o ..read more

On a whim last night, I did a Google search for a guy named Strange de Jim. Some older folks in the San Francisco Bay Area will know that name. Strange was a tipster with a marvelous sense of humor. “Tipster?” you ask? “Who did he send tips to?” To a legendary daily columnist for the S.F. Chronicle newspaper named Herb Caen. Now, Herb was a beloved institution in the Bay Area. He went to work on the Chronicle in 1936. Two years later, when his first assignment was over, he pitched his editor on writing a column about the city itself. That guy adored the city. Or as Caen would put it, The Cit ..read more

Have I told you lately how much I love writers? I’d like to share a few lines of dialog with you, spoken by a musician, in the 2007 movie Shooter. If you’re not familiar with this guy, odds are you’ve heard of his musical group called The Band. Levon Helm was the group’s drummer and one of three lead vocalists. Not only was he known for his musicianship and singing, he was also an actor. Among other films, he appeared as Loretta Lynn’s father in Coal Miner’s Daughter and as Gen. Chuck Yeager’s colleague, Capt. Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff. In Shooter, he plays a legendary, quirky gunsmith ..read more