Speak Easy (Short Story) - 1/20/2024 9:56:10 AM
I normally don't read crime mysteries or watch the many portrayed on television, but if this one were serialized here, I probably would read it cover to cover. And comment on every chapter.
From a rather normal murder premise, you have a curious cop sticking his nose where he shouldn't. But, his curiosity takes him beyond his job in vice to an interest in what makes this prostitute different from all the other dead ones.
They say the first line of a book should be the hook that catches the reader's eye, but I never believed that. You certainly have a good story started. Did you ever try to continue with the novel?
Ron
The Christmas Inferno (Short Story) - 1/19/2024 1:48:54 PM
A story that anyone who travels by air, especially during the holiday periods when the weather is bad, can relate to.
Some interesting satiric jabs along the way and a sense of humor to an otherwise, horrible situation.
Ron
The Toulmin Method (Short Story) - 1/18/2024 1:39:00 PM
Hi, Ron,
Thank you for your comments! I may write an expanded version of this piece at some point.
Take care,
Dan
The Toulmin Method (Short Story) - 3/22/2020 10:26:37 AM
I really enjoyed reading this diabolical tail about to teachers who both contracted different but deadly diseases and the lesson the first gave the second. Cool. Even though you left out a lot of details, the story was easy to follow even though the subject was quite bizarre.
Thank you for sharing what good fiction writing is all about.
Ron
Living Large With Daniel Lambert: The Skinny on Britain’s Heaviest Man (Article) - 7/7/2024 1:36:09 PM
Yes, you deserve one, for writing this article about Daniel and the possibility that you may have come from his lineage some way. Probably could be proven by a simple DNA test. I looked up Daniel's several paintings and it is very clear that he was very large and larger than life. Benjamin Franklin was rotund, but nothing like Daniel.
Unfortunately, while I was skinny, two of my secretary/typists had crushes on me for some reason. The first was hired by our department right out of high school with considerable secretarial skills. At only 19 and about 5 foot tall, she weighed about 350 pounds. When her rotund parents split, leaving her and her younger siblings in doubt where to stay, I offered to have her stay at my place. I was called into the department head's office and chastised… " Don't you know, Ron, she has a crush on you?" I didn't. I had no fetish for heavy women.
The second woman was also hired out of high school to work in the physical plant at the university where I worked. As I approached the last 10 years of my 30 year tenure with university, she was assigned as my secretary. From the way she flirted with me a bit, I figured she might have a crush on me but didn't want o reveal it for both of our jobs. She was forced to retire at 52 after 35 years service because of her health at 400 pounds and about 5 foot tall, as well. She died at 57, two years after her mother, a tall and thin woman, who she lived with.
Ron
The Razor-Potato Man (Article) - 3/23/2020 9:22:38 AM
Only recently have I encountered great writers personally. But in this story you recount a gathering to honor Ray Bradbury where you met Harlan Ellison, the subject of this story. I have always felt that true stories are often better and stranger than fiction. In this case, the story you recounted regarding Harlan Ellison's use of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes to convey his apparent (perhaps not fiction) resolution of a 40-year-old mystery is an example of Ellison's eccentric way of writing.
Quite frankly I haven't read Sherlock Holmes for much of Ellison, either, but what I have learned of Holmes eccentric style is not appealing to me like it is to so many other readers. Although I have been told that giving characters eccentricity makes them more real. Perhaps by you.
Your article gives us something to think about. What it takes to be a great story writer.
Ron
Into the Magical Citadel (Article) - 10/13/2017 9:04:38 AM
An extremely well written and informative article on gaming and all of its aspects. I turned off somewhere and all the detail because I don't have the disposable income or time to engage in adrenaline charged gaming addictions that many are. I do enjoy the distraction of computer solitaire while waiting for commercials to pass during nightly television shows.
I find that many games are based on the past and on role-playing that has been a romantic or heroic character to it, allowing the players to leave their mundane lives and become something more exciting. I can see why game playing can become addictive.
Ron
Club 2025 (Poetry) - 7/19/2025 11:13:36 AM
Very entertaining. I miss Roy boy and Amy, like I miss Jimi and Janis when I visit Club 1970.
Ron
I Stand (Poetry) - 9/2/2020 9:43:17 AM
Well said, Dan. I salute you.
I Stand (Poetry) - 9/2/2020 8:27:53 AM
Excellent write. Thank you for posting.
I Stand (Poetry) - 9/1/2020 11:08:43 AM
Your poem is a great tribute to all the people who fought for what has been considered the American way of life when it was threatened or not. When death occurs in the military in a family, it becomes much more a duty to honor that death. In my family, one of my uncles never left the United States and served from 1941 to 1963 ending as a consultant in Vietnam with servants. He is alive with his wife at 101. My other two uncles suffered from serious PTSD after the war, causing great harm to their wives and many children. Perhaps better if they had died or not served.
Your poem does not mention the people with dark skin who joined their bosses and even their masters as slaves and patriotically fought for the same freedoms, especially of speech, that all of those dead you mentioned did. In every war, they died in higher proportion to those most honored but were immediately forgotten after the war. Those that are modern warriors "for the people," like Roman gladiators, mostly slaves, have decided that it is time that they have faced "too much," and must speak out in positive ways so that the rest of us can understand their pain or be heroes but underclass citizens.
Have you ever been stopped by police for merely driving or riding riding with people of color? I have… Many times. So have these heroes of sports, driving in their own neighborhoods.
Most of the 13 colonists were patriotic subjects of the Crown of England. They served under Union Jack and marched and sang English fighting songs and their anthem, God Save the King. It was rabble-rousers In Boston and Philadelphia that didn't like England taking all of their hard labor and resources and leaving them with less. Sending over governors to rule over them and tax them without representation. This rabble, many from religious sects that were unwelcome in Europe or even criminals who escaped to a world where there wasn't as much law to find them out, became the soldiers of the American Revolution, Washington's ragtag army. Among that army were many men of dark color. They've been fighting for a part of the American heritage ever since.
Ron
I Stand (Poetry) - 9/1/2020 3:37:07 AM
i feel the same way.
Quarantine Dreams (Poetry) - 8/9/2020 11:48:29 AM
Quarantine can do mysterious things to humans. Enjoyed the poem.
Quarantine Dreams (Poetry) - 4/23/2020 9:11:00 AM
A lovely piece on the situation we are in. One thing puzzled me and that was, the "Zoom god." You may be referring to either a website or simply writing about zooming in. On the other hand it could have been Doom…… As in purveyors of.
Good stuff, Ron
Quarantine Dreams (Poetry) - 4/18/2020 9:36:07 PM
Thank God, for our dreams!!!... where we can find our words to speak poetry to say anything we like!... even to our boss!!! Hahaha!!!
Sandie
Quarantine Dreams (Poetry) - 4/17/2020 6:14:01 PM
Thank God you are able to dream and sleep at all. I just wrote a similar poem about our virus crisis where I explain how I stay up late at night with our cats. I dream about fast food. Perhaps because we hardly go out anymore. I probably need a good BIG MAC ATTACK! LOL
Love Affair (Poetry) - 3/24/2019 1:27:13 PM
I have always loved the ocean, any of them or the seas of different places. you have personified her well
budd
Love Affair (Poetry) - 3/23/2019 11:35:48 AM
A beautiful personification of the beautiful Pacific. She is that and more. You are so lucky to live on her doorstep. Made me recall how cold and fog draped she can be.
Ron
Love Affair (Poetry) - 3/23/2019 10:04:28 AM
Nice write. Although i live in Ohio, I to love the ocean.
Love Affair (Poetry) - 3/22/2019 11:30:14 PM
Lovely ... I enjoyed your relationship with the sea and your descriptive musing about her eternal beauty and majesty.
Jeanne
