By Scott D. Parker Wednesday marked what I like to call my personal Writer’s New Year’s Day. It commemorates my decision on 1 May 2013 to write and complete the story based on a scene in my head—a man, wearing a fedora, knocking on a door, and being answered with bullets. I resolved to finish that story no matter what. I did, and it’s now called WADING INTO WAR: A BENJAMIN WADE MYSTERY. The decision, back in 2013, was inspired by a quote whose origins I have forgotten: “A year from now, you may have wished you had started today.” By 2015, I had accomplished something else: I had formed my own ..read more

Years ago, when I was working as a tutor at a community college in New York, I was having a conversation about something (I don't remember what) with a fellow tutor of mine who was from Nigeria. In relation to whatever we were discussing, I mentioned "the Civil War". I took it as a given that my colleague would know which war I was talking about (THE Civil War), but he said to me in reply, "Which Civil War?". Good question. There have so many civil wars over time, and in relation to Nigeria alone the Nigerian Civil War, or Biafran Civil War, from 1967 to 1970 -- at least 100,000 military casua ..read more

by Scott D. Parker (The day job ate up all my time this week so I'm posting another rerun, this one from 2021. I am working on two new posts starting next week.) Sometimes old things trigger new questions. For the longest time, our front living room was television-less. That’s where the library is, it’s where we set up our Christmas tree, and it serves as the guest bedroom. We didn’t mind not having a TV in the front room, but during last year’s NFL season, I pulled out an old TV we had and one of those digital antennas and converter box and set up the TV. I’m the only one in the house who e ..read more

by Scott D. Parker (To commemorate the Apple TV series, Manhunt (the story of the search for John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators), here is a review (from 2020) of a book that looks at the first attempt on Lincoln's life.) There's a moment in The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Killed America's 16th President - and Why It Failed where the President-elect hears dire warnings from two independent sources that his life is in danger and he takes action. He agrees to sneak out of a pre-Inauguration Day party in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, don a disguise, and be whisked away by train, all ..read more

You could say that the current Netflix series Ripley goes retro since it uses black and white. Of course that use reflects the era Ripley is set in, but for a different kind of retro connected to Patricia Highsmith, there is an old TV series called Chillers, which I hadn't thought about in a while until I saw Ripley’s trailers and began thinking about all the Highsmith adaptations there have been over the years. I wrote a long piece once about many of these adapations, starting with 1951's Strangers on a Train and running through the 2009 adaption of The Cry of the Owl (I wrote the p ..read more

by Scott D. Parker In his newsletter this week, author Rob Hart gave some recent recommendations, including one outside of his typical genre. I concur but mere days earlier, I had done the same thing. To quote a wise man, I have taken my first step into a larger world. How It Started My wife has read nearly every book Elin Hilderbrand has written. Back five, six years ago, I even created a list on my phone with the books we had so that if I found myself at a bookstore and I happened upon one of her books, I knew which ones we owned. Heck, we even went to an event where we got to meet her ..read more

By Scott D. Parker When was the last time a book delivered an emotional response? One of my science fiction book club guys texted me earlier this week. He had finished a book that he admitted wasn’t great, but the sad ending actually touched him. He recalled the book  REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi as one about which I very much had an emotional response. Heck, that response smacked me in the face so much so that I could barely relate the ending of the book to my wife without bawling. Later, when the book club met, I still was rather emotional in explaining why I loved the book so much. My f ..read more

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by Scott D. Parker I’m not sure how many folks might need to read Chip Copley’s Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, but I certainly did.  Now, before we go any further, I must say that I am not going through a midlife crisis. At all. Most people who see me ask me why I’m always smiling or be-bopping to a song I hear in my head. I’m an optimistic, happy person. Have been for as long as I can remember. But this book ignited something in me. I refer to my current age as “fifty f*cking five!” so you know where I am in life. It’s true that when it comes to, say ..read more

The other day I saw the teriffic Love Lies Bleeding. It's a refreshing blast of neo-noir that certainly upholds the promise of director Rose Glass' first film, Saint Maud. Set in New Mexico in the late 1980s, the film unfolds with the heightened realism of any topnotch noir, until a key climactic moment toward the end. What happens in that moment I'm not about to give away, though anyone who's seen the film will know exactly what I'm talking about. It's something that in every way, stylistically and otherwise, comes out of nowhere, and it takes the film, for a few essential moments, into anoth ..read more