I’ve written a lot about my brother Tim. He and my brother Eric are the people to whom I’m closest in the world. Tim designed the covers of all three books in the Ghosts Trilogy. Each cover was one basically “one and we’re done.” We discussed ideas for Ghosts and Ballyhoo, but after that I…
The Dave Test
March 5, 2014
I’ve just finished The Dave Test: A Raw Look at Real Faith in Hard Times, by Frederick W. Schmidt. Dr. Schmidt is an Episcopal priest and professor; the Dave in the title was his brother, who died of brain cancer. The book is only 153 pages long, but it punches far above its weight class….
The pain of cashews and broccoli
February 23, 2014
About two weeks before Mom had her cancer surgery on April 4, 2013, she began to starve herself. I’ve written before why she did it. The law of unintended consequences bit us all in the ass: Mom, her parents, the nuns, Tim, me—everybody. Collectively, we were screwed. There’s no recourse. It happened, and it can’t…
Beware what you wish for
February 18, 2014
I was once forced into a family dispute among people I neither knew nor liked. It started when I saw a young woman sitting on the porch of a house, waiting. The elderly man who lived there was a friend of my mother’s, so I approached and asked if there was anything wrong. My parents…
Memories no longer hurt
February 16, 2014
For most of my life, memories were torture. They were like pitiless satires of my aspirations, mocking everything I’d ever attempted. All I had to do was try to sleep, and I’d be flooded with memories of disaster, horror, pain, humiliation, and failure. Around 2007 it started to change, as I realized that each catastrophe…
Internet tough guys actually gutless invertebrates
February 12, 2014
Reddit.com—the self-proclaimed “front page of the Internet”—has refused my request to do an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) on how Mike Albee and Lura Dold of Sandpiper Publicity defrauded me of $40,000 by exploiting the suicides of my parents in 2013. Though I provided all the documentation, I got the following message. Please do not use…