#openbook

What did you want to be when you grew up vs. what you are today?

I always wanted to be a writer. Since I could remember, words … Psych!

Of course, I didn’t grow up wanting to write. I hated writing. I still get flashbacks of cramps when I see one of those little penmanship books.  Like many children, I wanted to become a teacher when I grew up. It wasn’t because of a favorite teacher or anything like that. I liked standing in front of people and telling them what I knew.

I like being smart and right; it was the essential motivation that drove me to become an educator. It wasn’t until I became older that fulfillment from conveying knowledge to another overrode my hubris. I was usually the oddball at school. I spent a lot of time in corners, working or eating alone. But, every so often, a classmate would come to me with a concept they just couldn’t grasp or a hard-to-solve problem.  I helped them, even my bullies. It was then that I realized that I liked explaining what I knew more than just showing it.

Continue reading “An Author’s Life of Teaching” →

#openbook

Are audiobooks considered reading?

The busy American lifestyle often limits the time one has to pick up a book, which can devastate someone who loves reading. Audiobooks offer a solution, giving people access to amazing (and not so amazing) titles that they can enjoy during their commute while running errands or traveling. Some people suffer from motion sickness if they look down and read. They don’t enjoy the luxury of reading a book when on a long train, plane or car ride. So, audiobooks are a blessing.

I belong to a lot of avid reading groups on Facebook. As I read posts, I often see people defending using audiobooks. While I have encountered no one who would purport that listening to an audiobook is not “real reading,” I suppose the argument must exist, or else there wouldn’t be posts about it. Ironic because the origin of the word read does not involve or restrict the activity to the written word. Yeah, you can not ask a literary critic about a word and things not get geeky.

Continue reading “Audiobooks And The Multifaceted Ways We Convey Words” →

#openbook

Your characters have been placed in Witness Protection. What three truths about themselves do they want to keep?

We can never hide all of who we are.  Things will eventually come to the surface, even when the feds inject someone into a new life to safeguard them from immediate danger. The famous mobster Henry Hill is a prime example.

Hill entered the U.S. Marshals’ Witness Protection Program after he became an informant and testified against his fellow mobsters.

Think Tekashi 6ix9ine, who ratted out fellow Blood gang members. A book was written about Hill’s life as well as the movie Goodfellas.

Anyway, Hill spent years in the Witness Protection Program, committing so many crimes that he and his wife were eventually kicked out. He just couldn’t shake the lawbreaker deep inside. Although they are products of my creative author’s mind, there are things about my Brothers in Law series characters that they will not let go of, even if they are placed in hypothetical witness protection.

Brothers in Law

Continue reading “Characters Being True to Themselves” →