I’ve always been reluctant to sign up with the Department of Motor Vehicles, aka the DMV, as an organ donor. In one of those instances of being unable to make up my mind, I simply postponed a decision every time it came up. It’s a strategy I borrowed from a friend of mine, deciding by…

I love my family, my friends, my colleagues, my people. A friend who knows how I feel about celebrating Christmas made me a present anyway — a beautiful coat rack made entirely from salvage. I was touched but it’s still a difficult season for me. We must appreciate each other and I’m grateful for the…

The Challenge begins with a need. My need — for money. I’m an anti-capitalist, in my personal philosophy, but as John Updike once pointed out, we live in a capitalist economy and in it we must survive and thrive. For better or worse, I’m a writer; it’s what I’ve always been, in spite of having…

I’m not a devoted, conscientious blogger and I don’t have a large following. I don’t post regularly; I write when I have something to say. Other times, I’m happy to read what others have written and to comment if it’s warranted. My blog is my way of sharing my experiences in self-publishing with others who…

English is the language of the Empire and so naturally, effortlessly, adsorbs words and expressions from the international community. My little inner Grammarian finds that process immensely interesting. No mystery there. I grew up in Trinidad (&Tobago, if you want to name the country and overlook the specifics of neighborhood) a polyglot culture that was…

Satire is dangerous ground for a writer; people tend to take you literally and be offended by your work. I’ve read that this was what happened to Jonathan Swift when he wrote his satirical essay, ‘A Modest Proposal’. I’m not anywhere near the writer that Swift was but I can admire and appreciate his work…

I think that words produce intelligence. Yeah, I’ve heard the bits about different ways of learning, how some people hear things, while others need pictures, or social interaction, or so on and so on. I’m sure that there’s something there, but we still rely on words to think through things and to communicate ideas to others.…

I know there are many people who share these sentiments if not the personal history. I’m afraid that the country is headed for another civil war, one that will play out in chaos, on the streets, but will be as bloody and horrifying as that other that ended legal slavery. I’d say god help us…

I’m not a big fan of exclamation marks. If the language does it for your meaning, then the ! is redundant; if the language is not enough, then a rewrite is in order. Yet here we are, with a horrible ! mark in my title, of all places. Well, as Sharon likes to say, Rules…

Every writer knows how useful oxymorons can be; they allow you to express very complex ideas in a single phrase, often in an appealingly funny way. I ran into a great example of that when I did a google search on the word and found a site with this gem of an oxymoron – ‘academic…