Blog Index (2025)

1/23/2025

And so it begins

1/25/2025

Who Are You to Write a Book?

1/27/2025

Why Do We Write?

2/19/2025

Rambling to the Robot: How I Use (and Don’t Use) AI in My Writing Process

2/21/2025

The Icons of My Youth: Bruce Lee and Eddie Van Halen

2/23/2025

Why Am I Like This? The Stories That Shaped Gen X (And Me)

2/27/2025

What Is Missing and Why It’s Needed

3/4/2025

Be the Dog

3/9/2025

Drawing with Words: How John Byrne’s Backgrounds Influence My Writing

3/13/2025

An Appreciation of The Debut (2000): A Coming-of-Age Film That Deserves More Recognition

3/18/2025

Authenticity vs. Toxicity: Depicting the Past Without Judgment (But Inviting It Anyway)

3/23/2025

What Comes First? Rethinking the Release, the Plan, and the Relationship Between Two Books

3/28/2025

Before the Epilogue: What 1996 Felt Like

4/3/2025

The Proof of Love

4/6/2025

Left Behind at the Starting Line

4/15/2025

Some important updates…

4/18/2025

If A.I. Can Tell Your Story, It Was Never Yours to Begin With

4/21/2025

The Mountain of Garbage Behind Every Spark of AI Creativity

4/28/2025

Why I Keep Talking About AI: A Reflection on Change, Memory, and Creation

4/29/2025

Learning in the Age of AI: Between Knowledge and Tools

4/30/2025

Rambling to the Robot: Redux

5/1/2025

Art After the Fall: Why Creation Still Matters When Commerce Doesn’t

5/2/2025

Give It Away Now: On AI, Creativity, and Staying Human

5/11/2025

Three Sides to Every Story: Disappointment, Perspective, and the Beauty of What Is

5/19/2025

Critical Response So Far…

5/20/2025

What Might Female Readers Get Out of The Wake of Expectations?

5/27/2025

Navigating the ’80s (and Everything After)

5/29/2025

Writing Without Apology: Flawed Humanity and the Long Arc of Honesty

6/2/2025

The Joke That Hid the Hurt: On Calvin McShane, Humor, and the Armor That Works Too Well

6/3/2025

A Love Letter, an Autopsy, and Maybe Even Our On the Road?

6/14/2025

Simulated Podcast, Real Conversation: Behind the Logan Interview

6/16/2025

I Didn’t Start a Podcast. I Built a Mirror.

6/17/2025

Creation as Dialogue: What Writing Taught Me About God

6/18/2025

Writing My Life Into the Box

6/20/2025

Catwalk Bed Hair and Cultivated Roots

6/23/2025

The Conversation Continues: Why I Wrote a Companion

6/30/2025

No, I Didn’t Feed My Book to ChatGPT

7/3/2025

A Tragic Symmetry: Coming of Age and Coming to Terms

7/7/2025

The Lone Wolf Empath (and His Foil): Craving Understanding vs. Craving Freedom

7/10/2025

The Lone Wolf, Part Two: Cultural Roots — and the Fictional Alchemy of Calvin & Jake

7/14/2025

The Superman Dilemma: Aspiration, Impotence, and Emotional Triage

7/17/2025

Real Talk with Logan Part 2: The Return of Javier De Lucia

7/21/2025

Everything Counts: On Authorial Intent, Discovery, and the Life Hidden in the Work

7/29/2025

The Filthy Profound: Finding Meaning in the Gutter

7/31/2025

Unspoken Hierarchies of Attraction: Inside Wake’s Subtle Social Math

8/20/2025

From Morpheus to McShane: On the Power of Story and the Tragedy of Expectation

8/25/2025

Before and After: How Looking for Alaska and My Duology Explore Coming of Age and Loss from Opposite Ends of Life

9/7/2025

The Echo Between Beginnings and Endings

9/10/2025

The Unique Grief of Losing a Sibling with Special Needs: Coping with Love, Loss, and Guilt

9/15/2025

On Being Defined by the Company You Keep

9/21/2025

Ben the Iron Safe, Calvin the Open Book: What Their Friendship Says About Men and Grief

9/28/2025

In Praise of a Noble Failure

10/2/2025

A Pleasant Fiction and Manchester by the Sea: Grief in the Mundane

10/5/2025

The Five Stages of Grief in A Pleasant Fiction

10/11/2025

Saint Mom and Sinner Dad

10/14/2025

When You’re Young, You Feel Like the Story Is Your Own

10/20/2025

Chiaroscuro

10/27/2025

A Pleasant Fiction as an Existential Reply to A Grief Observed

10/28/2025

From Faith to Framework: The Evolution of Grief Literature from Lewis to De Lucia

10/30/2025

Calvin McShane and the Collapse of Theodicy

11/1/2025

The Door Slams Shut — Chapter 1 of A Grief Observed and the First Silence of A Pleasant Fiction

11/2/2025

Between Faith and Silence

11/4/2025

Bargaining, Rationalization, and Consolation — Chapters 3 and 4 of A Grief Observed

11/6/2025

Final Reflection: From Distortion to Clarity

11/11/2025

Is It Wrong to Want Something That’s Bad for You, or That You Can’t Have?

11/18/2025

The Same Thing, But Different

11/28/2025

Thanks, Kevin, PART II: Different Counters, Different Escapes

12/9/2025

Thanks, Kevin, PART III — What Randall and Calvin Both Realize at the End

12/22/2025

Boyhood, By Accident: How Time Became the Co-Author of the Calvin Cycle