rjnello

[rjnello]

If You Want To Give Baddies Your Keys…

In the mornings, when actively writing a new novel, as I am now, I have developed an inadvertent routine over the years. With here being “The center (centre) of my authoring universe,” I like to have “two” posts a week up, minimum, if possible, so I may do a new blog post here on whatever subject I think might be interesting to bring up. Even before doing one of those, I tend first thing to mess…

[rjnello]

16 December 1775

It is one of literature’s most remarkable life stories. A woman born in and who would live her whole life in England, and although she would have little formal schooling (as we understand it) and would never marry, would write books mostly in her 20s and 30s that focused largely on the inferior and vulnerable position of women and of their need to marry because they were permitted few prospects…

[rjnello]

The Acrobat

If you write too, you have likely seen lots of online opinions on the timeless (no pun intended) issue of how quickly an author “should” write a book. One suggestion we see is hurry, hurry, hurry in frantically scribbling typing out the first full draft as quickly as possible regardless of its sloppiness and errors. After all, the argument goes, all of the mistakes can and will be corrected…

[rjnello]

“Travel Influencers”: Rick Steves Most Ain’t

If you are an American (especially of an increasingly, uh, maybe “certain age”) and like to travel, or even just watch well made travel programs, you may have heard of travel writer and television host, Rick Steves. As I recall, he first became prominent in the early 2000s for his informative and entertaining PBS program featuring him traveling around Europe. He is still making programming like…

[rjnello]

Health Insurance Is NOT About "Health"

It is forever hard to understand this. Millions of Americans who are utter skeptics about car and home insurance companies, who would not trust those companies as far as they could throw them, seem to have some weird “faith” in health insurers as different in “providing healthcare.” Yet as car insurers are not in existence to give you a new car and as home insurers are not in existence to give…

[rjnello]

How We "Identify" Ourselves

Saw this the other day and thought it worth mentioning here. This has always been something Europeans (and other non-Americans) may not understand about Americans. And it is possible to have fun with it as she does below: [From Instagram.] To be serious, though, it has not been my experience that Americans usually identify themselves to a foreigner in the same way they would to another…

[rjnello]

The “Average” American Reader

At age 14, in U.S. “9th grade,” I read my first “adult” book that was not assigned by school: The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper: [Back cover. James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans. Photo by me, November 2024.] And WOW, I remember it was not an easy read. Even re-reading it now (over forty years and two graduate degrees since), it still is not. Cooper was often wordy…

[rjnello]

I Write It As I See It

I believe my biggest responsibility as an author is honesty with you, as readers, who have purchased, or may decide to purchase, my book(s). For example, true, you may not care about this. Or you might be interested to learn that aside from editing and mostly grammar corrections offered from maybe 2 or 3 others I know well and really trust (such as the long-time English girl friend who had…

[rjnello]

Life Goes On

Dear Drunk: You are still upset, I see. I’m sure you Vermonters are crazed. Being at a distance, I am most immediately concerned about Trump’s disdain for our allies and that he doesn’t care if our friends here in Europe are invaded and slaughtered: In taking that anti-NATO position, which no president has ever since NATO’s creation in 1949, Trump is plainly either a Putin stooge or simply too…

[rjnello]

"Rice Krispies" Is Fine Now And Then, But...

Back in the 1990s (LOL!), when I was in my young 20s, after watching a French-made film with a French girlfriend, she suggested what was then new to me, but which has by now become a cliché. Americans, she had laughed, are happy to watch people slaughtered en masse on screen and few honestly seem really to care. In comparison, she went on, portraying on screen a man and a woman merely having…

[rjnello]

When "Home" Is Lost

Been spending lots of time on the (almost finished) novel. So no wordy blog post today. (LOL!) Just a return to about 240 years ago… [1780s American farmhouse. By AI.] …and a period of early U.S. history… Continue reading When “Home” Is Lost

[rjnello]

Our New "Confederacy"

Dear Drunk: Just because I’m not in Vermont doesn’t mean I am any happier than you are that a slim majority of our fellow Americans who bothered to vote think that that stupid, corrupt, immoral, fascist sh-thead should sit in the White House AGAIN. To me, as a historian, January 20, 2025 will mark the lowest point in U.S. presidential history: A convicted felon will take the oath of office, thus…

[rjnello]

Truly Dreadful “Friends”

A decade ago, the late-1990s/early-2000s sitcom Friends was big viewing among some younger people who did not see it the first time around. (My then teen niece, who is now in her later-20s, here in England had the series on DVD.) It is now standard fare on streaming services, with Matthew Perry’s tragic early death renewing interest even more. It continually attracts first-time viewers mostly for…

[rjnello]

The First Felon

So, some five million more U.S. voters have chosen Donald J. Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris to be the next president. Such is how things have been done since 1789, when one George Washington was first elected. And, indeed, let us hope it will be done again in 2028 in much the same way. Because Trump will be the first criminally-convicted (and by a jury) felon and the first publicly…

[rjnello]

My Last Word (On This)

Speaking at a dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere on April 29, 1962, President John F. Kennedy said: “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” No one will ever make such a quip about one Donald J. Trump as…

[rjnello]

It "Starts"... In A New York Forest

I had written here recently that to make up for fewer “sneak peeks” than I had used previously for coming novels, that I would share a few even with this latest novel now nearly finished. First, here, I thought for this one, I would try a little illustrating AI using the WordPress AI art generator. Messing around with it can be fun: More importantly, it struck me that this might be an especially…

[rjnello]

Overseas Americans' Right To Vote Threatened

If you are a registered Democrat planning to vote for Harris/Walz, vote now if you can. Voting early takes you off of the party’s radar. If you vote even today, rather than on November 5 on Election Day, that means the party campaign can then spend the remaining nearly a week trying to get out last minute OTHER voters and not be wasting resources to chase you to get out to vote when you are going…