This year’s Fourth of July may seem a bit anticlimactic. It’s like we have been celebrating our nation’s 250th birthday for a whole year, with the pace picking up in recent months. At the same time, as a nation we seem to be coming apart at the seams. The global village enabled by laptops, smartphones,…
Read more
With Father’s Day this Sunday, it seems a good time to reflect on the strategic importance of fathers. Not just for our personal sense of security and well-being, but the future of our nation. This thought came to me recently reading From Chaos to Clarity by Mike Signorelli. The Indiana native made waves after moving…
Read more
Until I read Michael Connelly’s The Proving Ground, I had never heard of Garcia v. Character Technologies. In the book’s endnotes, the bestselling crime author mentions reviewing court pleadings in the case while working on his eighth novel in the “Lincoln Lawyer” series. In October of 2024, Florida mother Megan Garcia filed a lawsuit against…
Read more
It’s been years since I saw this quote from bestselling author Stephen King, but it stuck with me: “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.” A corollary appeared in a collection of inspiring quotes published in Inc. magazine. It came from Robert Collier, whose The…
Read more
We acquired a flat-screen TV several years ago when one of our grandsons offered us his 40-inch Television free of charge. Turns out it had been sitting in the corner of his living room after he purchased a friend’s 50-inch model. Then in the midst of a move, the friend didn’t want to drag the…
Read more
Although the saying has been around for decades, I only recently encountered “human in the loop.” The phrase appears in Fast Attack Leadership, a forthcoming book I recently finished ghostwriting for business consultant Marc Koehler. In Marc’s seminars, he often relates leadership lessons he learned on a Naval nuclear submarine to modern business challenges. His…
Read more
If I heard it once, I heard it a dozen times at various writers’ conferences: as a freelancer, you need to start your day by tackling the hard jobs first. Buckle down, plow into the toughest task, and then move on with the rest of your to-do list. Finally, when I had a chance to…
Read more
I periodically use the New York Times as a resource for research and book footnote citations, but am not a daily reader. So a friend first alerted me to the “pay to play” method (spotlighted in mid-April) used to boost California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s memoir onto the legendary newspaper’s bestseller list. “Here’s one way to…
Read more
Until recently, Logan, West Virginia—just a 90-minute drive from my home—was best known as the hometown of America’s Got Talent winner Landau Eugene Murphy Jr. The former car-wash-worker-turned-singing-sensation captured the hearts of underdogs everywhere with his rags-to-riches saga, chronicled in his 2013 book, From Washing Cars to Hollywood Stars. It helps that he retains the…
Read more
If there’s one thing our frenetic, fast-paced, always-on world needs, it’s a break. God modeled a sabbath for us in Genesis 2:2; if He needed a break after creating the world, what does that say for everyone else? This principle isn’t just a wise prescription for a weary soul; it extends to good writing and…
Read more
