Tag Archive: Writing

The Trick to Writing Great Conversations

March 28, 2014 0 Comments

The trick to writing great conversations is dear god how the hell am I supposed to know? Who COULD know? Seriously, do you understand how hard it is to pen dialogue that sounds real and natural but that also gets across the information you need to get across? ‘Cause that’s the thing, really. In a book or a short story or comic or whatever, dialogue isn’t merely people talking. It has to get across information. That information may be characterization or character history or plot details or exposition or mood or a million other things, but the point is that dialogue should be there for a reason. Yet at the same time, it should feel perfectly natural. Perfectly real. Perfectly alive. Otherwise readers will cry…
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Writing

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This book about Breaking Bad is out.

November 18, 2013 0 Comments

Breaking Down Breaking Bad

So hey, check it out. Breaking Down Breaking Bad: Unpeeling the Layers of Television’s Greatest Drama is available for purchase and stuff. It’s from me, so that’s kind of cool. It’s available for Kindle and Kindle-friendly devices such as iPads and iPhones, as well as in a print edition. It’s totally affordable, too. Impulse buy! This book began as a germ of an idea about a year or so ago, but it wasn’t an idea I took very seriously at first. Too much on my plate at the time, dealing with too many other things, juggling too many other projects. But in the run up to the show’s final eight episodes, my fever for all things Breaking Bad reached ridiculous proportions. I spent an absurd…
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Television, Works by Eric, Writing

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LAKEHURST: The Facebook Page

July 18, 2013 0 Comments

Hey, not fer nuthin’, but my favorite little Pine Barrens town happens to have a Facebook page, and it happens to have been started by yours truly, and it happens to have all sorts of awesome pictures and facts from this great book about Lakehurst. In fact, the page has been going for some time now, and it’s full of AWESOME memories and pictures and general stuff from in and around Lakehurst, like airships, the Hindenburg disaster, life in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, places to drink great New Jersey beer, and loads more. So hey, be cool and click on over and give the page a “like.” I’d be awful appreciative. I might even smile about it or something. And hey, it’d be spiffy…
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Uncategorized, Works by Eric

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My new book comes out soon…

July 15, 2013 0 Comments

Hitchcock's Villains

… so that’s kind of cool. The follow-up to A Year of Hitchcock is due out in, damn, just a few weeks! Called Hitchcock’s Villains: Murders, Maniacs and Mother Issues, this collaboration with Jim McDevitt is a full exploration of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest villains, what makes them tick, the themes that drive the darkness in his movies, and of Hitchcock’s own psyche. I think it’s pretty great. This will be my fifth book, collaborative or otherwise, with a sixth hopefully coming out next year in ebook form via the Philadelphia Weekly. (That project is still up in the air.) The project has actually been in gestation for some time now, practically since A Year of Hitchcock was finished. Basking in the glow of finishing such…
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Alfred Hitchcock, Films, Works by Eric, Writing

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I think I’m a beer writer now…

July 5, 2013 0 Comments

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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Craft Beer, Works by Eric, Writing

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