Sometimes in life you just get so excited that you set yourself up for disappointment. Your imagination sets the bar so high that you make it impossible for reality to measure up to your expectations. This has happened to me a few times in my life; my first trip to Paris, the fourth Indiana Jones Movie, Star Wars Episode 1, bacon flavored vodka, the list goes on. And it happened to me again when I sat down to read Ernest Cline’s second novel Armada. Hopefully by now you’ve read Mr. Cline’s Ready Player One which can best be described as…
Category: Literary Liaisons
Wily Wordplay: Shakespeare Quotes
As many of you know my first novel The Seeker will be released this Friday, July 31st. As such I thought I would treat you all to some of my favorite quotes from the greatest author of all-time the Bard of Bards: Mr. William Shakespeare. “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” ― As You Like It “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” ― Julius Caesar “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” ― Hamlet “Oft…
Wily Wordplay- On Love
Greeting Readers!!! After a bit of a break I’m back and what better way to ease back into a routine than with another edition of Wily Wordplay. And considering last week’s landmark Supreme Court decision our topic for today seemed like a no-brainer. So here they are in no particular order my favorite ten quotes about Love: “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” ― Dr. Seuss “Where there is love there is life.” ― Mahatma Gandhi “It is best to…
A Writer’s Tale- The Allahakbarries
Quick show of hands who here knows anything about cricket? Anybody? What about you in the back? Well whether you raised a hand or not you probably could handle a cricket bat as well as the subject of today’s A Writer’s Tale. I’m sure many of you are familiar with J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (or at least are familiar with Johnny Deep playing Barrie creating Peter Pan in Finding Neverland). What you are most likely not familiar with is Barrie’s lifelong obsession with the sport of cricket and the story of his amateur cricket team the Allahakbarries. Now if that…
Wily Wordplay- Opening Lines
It’s Monday here at the Eclectic Eccentric and the start of the work week for most of you out in the world so I thought as a little bit of extra motivation for both you and for me I would share some of my favorite opening lines in all of literature in this month’s edition of Wily Wordplay. As always the quotes are in no particular order. Enjoy! “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I…
A Writer’s Tale: Roald Dahl- Fighter Ace
Roald Dahl is a name that is more often associated with Oompa Loompas and giant peaches than aerial combat but during World War II it was all hands on deck and Roald Dahl was no exception. So this month in A Writer’s Tale we delve into the world of Roald Dahl-Fighter Ace. In 1939 Dahl was working for Shell Oil in what is now Tanzania. When war looked to be inevitable Dahl enlisted himself in military service. After a brief stint as a Lieutenant in the King’s African Rifles Dahl signed up for the Royal Air Force attending flight school…
In Stores Now- The Girl On the Train
Today I’m not even going to bother with a preamble. There will be no smooth segue into our topic of interest. No this post will be jarring. And disconcerting. And hopefully will be an absolute pain to read. And still it will have more narrative cohesion than The Girl on the Train. This mess of a book debuted at number one on the NY times best seller list and stayed there for thirteen weeks. And because of that I hate all of you. Maybe I should be nicer. After all someday I will have a debut novel that someone will…
Wily Wordplay- On Writing
As you’ve been perusing this site you’ve no doubt seen several mentions of my ongoing pursuit of a professional writing career. With a poetry book out and a novel finished I hope that dream is closer to becoming a reality. But it is no easy thing to make a living by telling stories born of your own heart and mind. Discouragement is as common a thing to a write as the dawn is to the sun. In those times I like to seek out some of my heroes for their take on a struggle I know we have shared. And…
On the Shelf- Devil in the White City
Welcome to the first installment of On the Shelf where I review books that have been out for a while but that you may be interested in going back and picking up (which really for me defines all books). I noted in my first instalment of In Stores Now that I had intended to write about Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America before realizing it was almost twelve years old. Well for On the Shelf a dozen years is nothing to stand in the way of a good (or…
A Writer’s Tale- Hunter S. Thompson
“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.” -Hunter S. Thompson Today marks the tenth anniversary of the death of one of the great American writers of the twentieth century and the Father of Gonzo Journalism. What better way to honor such a master of the craft than to focus on his exploits for our first “A Writer’s Tale” segment. Now the purpose of these posts is not to provide you with a general biography of a specific author, after all you have Wikipedia for that, but rather to tell you…