The Olympics, Greeks, and the Nick Temple Files The Summer Olympics are drawing to a close in Tokyo. I’ll be honest, I haven’t paid that much attention to them this time around. As usual, it looks like some amazing athletes performed superhuman acts, and some distant favorites came out on top. All great stuff, and...Read More

Editing and Proofing a Novel – The Details Matter I’m an independent author. I self-publish my books. Although I have had five of my books released by publishers in the past, all of my books are now self-published. That means I alone am responsible for their content. There is no one to blame but me...Read More

Progress Report on New Cold War Espionage Thriller The summer has been a good one for making progress on The Heidelberg Gap, Nick Temple File no. 6. I thought it would take me to the end of the year to finish a first draft. Now it’s looking like I could get there by the end...Read More

Politics and the Cold War Espionage Thriller It’s an understatement to say that American political institutions are being challenged in ways the likes of which the living haven’t seen. Times are tough, uncertain, and getting more so. In addition to all of our other domestic conflicts, we are struggling with the physical and psychological effects...Read More

How Studying the Common Law Helps Fill in the Gaps in a Cold War Thriller’s Plot One role of a common law judge is to fill in the interstices left by elected representatives and statutory law, or so I was taught while studying the law. The idea is that it is impossible to think of...Read More

Two Novels in Progress and a New Resolve After a break of about five months, I’m writing again, trying to pick up where I left off in two different works. The break lasted longer than I thought it would. I assumed I’d restart the process shortly after January 1st, but, as they say, life got...Read More

A Heidelberg Gap Preview Just for the hell of it, here’s a draft of Chapter 1 of my new Nick Temple File, The Heidelberg Gap. It will be the sixth title in the series. So far, so good. I passed 10,000 words yesterday, and feel like I’m hitting a productive stretch after some time away...Read More

Uncles My brother sent me the picture below this morning. It’s a picture of my father, the man on the far right, and his four brothers. It was taken in the late 1960s. As far as I know, it’s the last photograph of them all together as my Uncle Pete, the man seated in the...Read More

More of My Poetry Published by The Writers Club The Writers Club has published another poem of mine. This one, entitled “Resolve,” is a quick riff on conformity and adulthood, and it is below. This is the sixth poem of mine that they’ve published. I think it’s great that a platform like The Writers Club...Read More

A Cold War Podcast with Mark Valley and Jonathan Dyer Mark Valley, West Point Grad, Berlin veteran, actor, producer, writer, and all around good guy, has a podcast called The Live Drop. A while back he interviewed me. We talked about a wide range of matters including my time as a Russian Linguist in Berlin...Read More