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I recently pruned my roses, as I do every February. I used to do this on or after Valentine’s Day, but climate change is real and upon us, so now this chore gets done at the beginning of February. It’s…
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Hold, Please…
I regret to inform you, dear readers, that I wrote an essay for The Wingback at the last minute, and it was absolute shit. So rather than pass that off as anything you might possibly want to read, I am…
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Is AI My Competition?
In the summer of 2023, I stopped writing for How Stuff Works after more than a decade of freelancing for the company. After I left, I learned from my editor (who has also since left the company) that article updates…
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Hot Takes on Cold English
When winter storms bring the city to a halt, I apparently think of poetry, which I’m kind of surprised to learn about myself. In 2021, when ice encapsulated every twig and leaf of every tree and shrub and bent them…
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Rebellion: Behind the Scenes
Tomorrow, January 16, 2024, my translation of Memoirs of a French Courtesan Volume 1: Rebellion will be published. I’m really proud of this project, and it’s gotten great reviews from advance readers. So far it’s earned four out of five…
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2023 Reading Review
Let’s start this reading review with the stat that most people use: I read 52 books this year. A tidy average of one a week. Several of those were for school; a couple of them were for a class I…
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Welcome to the Wingback
Happy New Year! I love a new year. I’ll celebrate a fresh start any day. I don’t make resolutions or even pick a word or phrase; I just like turning a new page in my planner and looking forward. You…
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Automotive R&D for Writers
For about a decade, more than half of my freelancing gigs were in automotive journalism. I still keep a hand in, but I do more editing and authoring these days. Automotive journalism involves a lot more travel and fancy dinners…
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Happy Birthday to Me
Today, November 20, is my birthday. Not a milestone birthday, but a solidly middle-aged year, just past the likely halfway point of my natural lifespan, if my family is any measure of that. My grandmother has been lying about her…
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Miraculous Nuns of the 7th and 21st Centuries
The New York Times is reporting from towns across the country to explore “how America defines itself one place at a time.” On September 9, the dispatch came from an abbey in Gower, Missouri. The founder of the Abbey of…