Way back in the 1970s, I stood at a fork in the road: should I go to college, or begin trudging down the path to a lifetime career? I did neither. Instead, I spent the winter teaching skiing at a popular ski resort just to get the adventure out of my system. As a full-time ski instructor, I taught two…
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What Makes a Successful Writer? Everything you need to be able to do besides write
The scene opens with the haggard writer hunched over a dilapidated Underwood, struggling to meet his midnight deadline. The air is stale and thick with cigarette smoke and there’s an empty bottle of scotch lying on the floor. By the smell of things, it’s obvious he hasn’t slept, eaten or washed his clothes in over a week. That was the…
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Why I Became a Professional Tattoo Artist And the lure of fame, fortune and handling naked body parts
There were a lot of reasons why I decided to become a tattoo artist: fame, fortune and the lure of handling marginally-clothed women in the wee hours of the morning. Guaranteed employment was right up there too, but the real reason was simple. I was hopelessly unemployed, mired in lawsuits, and flat broke, so I was desperate to try anything.…
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Five Minutes from Lorraine Moxie CrimeFighter & Cholera Priest: babies' names have gone wild
During the period affectionately known as the Baby Boom, routine amniocentesis and maternal sonograms were still years away. And while the 50s and 60s can claim fame to some of the best music in the history of the universe, its struggling medical practices offered no help to new parents trying to choose their babies’ names. That being the case, one…
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15 Questions Your Ghostwriter Should Be Asking You And other tips for finding the right person to write your book
What do a Labrador Retriever, a poor Southern tobacco farmer, and a World War II survivor[1] have in common? If you guessed nothing, you’d be wrong. In fact, each was the basis of a best-selling book. Two of them even went on to become Hollywood box office smashes. The world we live in is a fascinating place, filled with thousands…
