Works by Eric

Posts showcasing new books, articles, features, etc. by Eric

I think I’m a beer writer now…

Way back when I first wrote Stuff Every Husband Should Know and contributed to Geek Wisdom, I pitched the idea of doing a beer book to my editor at Quirk Books. I can kinda write, and I like beer, so why not bring the two together for a beer book? I was given a dose of reality. You have no history of beer writing, he said, so pitching a beer book would be difficult. Made sense. I may write, but that doesn’t mean I could suddenly do a great book on growing great tulips. (I could.) I needed experience. So I started blogging about beer. It was a way to get my feet wet and start building cred in the beer world. To be honest,…
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Sandy from the Jersey Shore island perspective

I’ve already mentioned that I am writing about Hurricane Sandy from my perspective. Swell, I suppose, but more important than that is trying to tell the story of other people who lived through the storm. My Sandy story, after all, is pretty tame compared to what many went through. And it really is. Yes, the Hurricane Sandy videos I posted seem kinda neat if you didn’t live through it, but that’s all they were. Kinda neat. Prior to the videos the water was two feet HIGHER. It sounds kind of nuts, and yes, the night of the storm was WILD, but we still survived. We lived. We moved on. But what do you do when you CAN’T simply move on? What do you do when…
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Hurricane Sandy: How We Saw It

When I was asked to engage in some first person journalism about being at the Jersey Shore for Hurricane Sandy, I was both excited to do it and a little hesitant. Excited because, like everyone at the Shore who experienced the storm firsthand, I wanted to share my experience with others. After all, that’s what you DO when it comes to life-altering experienced. You talk about them (even if just with a few videos). But hesitant because, unlike so many people in my area, including friends and family, my family and I came through okay. Oh, we lost some cars and have had our home life  turned a little upside down, but we still have a home to go home to. So I hesitated. But…
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Why would you write about your lousy little town?

I never saw my hometown ’till I stayed away too long. –“San Diego Serenade,” Tom Waits This sort of sums up Lakehurst: Barrens, Blimps & Barons, a book I wrote and self-published about the tiny Pine Barrens town I spent years trying to leave. That’s right. For most of my teen years, I wanted to get the hell out of that place. So if I spent years trying to leave the town — and I jumped ship as soon as I could, fleeing at the age of 19 — why would I spend the time to write and publish a book about it? Tom Waits nailed it in the above lyric from “San Diego Serenade,” featured on 1974’s The Heart of Saturday Night. There is…
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Did I mention my podcast is back?

For the first time in nearly a year, you can hear Jim McDevitt and I yapping again on the Year of Hitchcock podcast right at this awesome link. Our Hooray! We’re Back! episode doesn’t only get us back online, it announces our super awesome news: We’ll be podcasting monthly from now until eternity — or until I get sick of it — talking about classic films, directors, actors, and whatever else suits our fancy. So that’s cool. The show is available on iTunes (though the feed is screwy for some reason), as well on other outlets. And hey, iTunes users? We sure would like your reviews. The first few are from when we were still new and, frankly, terrible. They are understandably bad. But we…
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