Tag Archive: Writing

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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25 Things You Should Know About Plot

January 7, 2013 0 Comments

Chuck Wendig brings us an excellent blog post called 25 Things You Should Know About Plot. It’s about … well, I bet you’ve already figured that part out. Here’s an excerpt: Let Characters Do They Heavy Lifting Characters will tell you your plot. Even better: let them run and they’ll goddamn give it to you on a platter. Certainly plot can happen from an external locus of control — but you’re not charting the extinction of the dinosaurs or the lifecycle of the slow loris. Plot is like Soylent Green: it’s made of people. Characters say things, do things, and that creates plot. It really can be that simple. Authentic plot comes from internal emotions, not external mechanics. The whole post is full of great…
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Writing

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Hurricane Sandy: How We Saw It

January 3, 2013 0 Comments

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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Works by Eric, Writing

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Are you a writer if no one reads you?

December 8, 2012 3 Comments

The question seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? If you write, you’re a writer … right? Isn’t that how it works? But the fact is, whether they admit it or not, every writer has grappled with a variation of this question, subtle or otherwise. After all, we don’t simply want to write, we want to be read. We want to be experienced. We want to be RECOGNIZED … … as a writer. And there’s the crux. What separates “a writer” from someone else? When can Joe say it when Bob can’t? The basic answer is that if you write you’re a writer. If the statement isn’t presented in the context of “what do you do for a living” then that’s probably fine. You’re a writer if you…
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Random Musings, Writing

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