Hey readers! I see people checking out the blog from time to time. I wish I had more to say, but who has time for Moby Dick when the perch are biting?

It’s a little guy, I’ll admit it. But if not for the picture, how would you even know? It could just as well be a musky, or hell, an alligator. A writer could make up anything, even a white whale.

I never set out to be Herman Melville. So in that respect, I guess I’ve succeeded. I’m more of a Bartelby the Scrivener type, texting away from the obscurity of my ice shack.

Technology is something else. I wish the fish would bite, but instead, here I am talking to you from over twenty feet of frigid water.

The year I turned 50 has been painful to me in a number of ways. My fly rod broke, one of best friends died and my book deal fell through. I could go on about these matters in more detail but I would only be boring you as well as myself.

Oh, wait. I think I have a bite…

My God, what a fish! A real leviathan. Its head was too big to fit through the hole. Now it’s taken my drag and ran away with the whole damn spool. I can’t believe people swim in this lake. They’re risking their lives and don’t even know it!

As I was saying, I’ve accumulated enough material for four concise books these last nine years. At this point, my capacity for memoir feels pretty well exhausted. I have made the creative decision to break my City of Crows memoir into two smaller books which will be more thematically focused. The first book dealing with my childhood years inside the trailer park, will be called The Skinny Kid. This book will be followed by City of Crows, a memoir about becoming a dad and experiencing my own father die as my wife battled cancer. My third book, Bobber Watching, is a collection of fishing-themed stories about fatherhood. The last book in the series focuses on my work and family life under the shadow of the pandemic.

And so I wait…

I put out my lines in the hope of something happening. The publishing side of writing is a bit like fishing in that regard, a lot of waiting without significant reward.

Oh, what’s this now? Something is happening with my bobber. I better put this silly phone down.