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BLUE SKIES IN THE BOOK REVIEW MIRROR

Blue Skies came to me via Twitter. T.C. Boyle mentioned a new novel and he delivered. What he delivered felt a little too close to home for me, which kept me reading. How close?

WRITER WORKING ON CASU-11

The writer working on Carrier Aircraft Service Unit 11 is William Little. The official title of his book is MECHANIC ON THE WING, The Untold Story of Carrier Aircraft Unit Eleven (CASU-11) 1943-1946. I first heard about it in 2019 during a Rick Steves tour of Paris. There was something about meeting a former Navy […]

BANNED BOOKS ON BANNED BOOK WEEK?

Banned books sounds like a term from the Middle Ages, or the Spanish Inquisition where you might pay with your life if the wrong book was found on your property. Book bans are nothing new, and don’t last, but in our hyper-alert social medial world that makes it feel like the world is collapsing every […]

STORY CATCHER IN THE WRITING ROOM NOT SO WRY

J.D. Salinger was a story catcher who wrote books. One of them sells like new today: Approximately 250,000 copies of The Catcher in the Rye are sold each year – which is almost 685 per day! The Catcher in the Rye was first published in 1951. That’s quite a record for keeping readers coming back. […]

WRESTLING WITH THE DEVIL, A SUN DEVIL, AND WINNING

Great wrestling stories are journeys, internally and externally. From The Odyssey, to Tom Sawyer, to Saving Private Ryan, a journey works to transport readers into the lives and times of those written about. Tonya Russo Hamilton joins the ranks of those who capture time and place and deliver a story flowing with streams of emotion.

WRITE A BOOK, IT’LL BE FUN, UNTIL IT’S NOT

Fans, followers, and one-timers on boomerpdx have seen my book writing posts. It’s not exactly how-to-write stuff, but it helps show process. One nice piece of advice I’ve heard: You’d better love your book topic, because you’ll eventually hate it. Since my book is a guided tour of what to expect after a cancer diagnosis, […]

AUTHOR PHOTOS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS? Pt.3

    Demonstrate how a book works?   You can hold it, turn pages, but a book works in other ways.   They hold doors open, shine light, give hope.   An author thinks they’ve done one thing, but a reader takes it another way, which is the magic of book. We get to make […]

AUTHOR PHOTOS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS? Pt.1

    Do Not Make Direct Eye Contact?   This man looks like he might be blind, which explains the eye contact part. The other part is what an author looks like from different time periods. There’s little difference in the region under a beard from any period.   If Mt. Rushmore for writers needs […]

MENS HEALTH MONTH, SEE YOUR DOCTOR

  Younger people ignore their health? That’s not a good trend during Mens Health Month. Maybe they mistrust the medical industry? Big Pharma? There’s some evidence millennials are the most into ‘self care.’ That’s nice, except when self care isn’t enough. Older people ignoring their health is an even worse trend. The mental part of […]

BAD TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS REVEALED

Find the right cluster of furniture piled behind a steel fence. If it carries an association with a famous author, all the better. Frame it in and push the button. All done, right? Photography secrets are in plain sight in this example. The fence distorts the view. The frame’s too small to read anything. It […]