Among the graduate-level courses I teach at Harvard University’s Extension School is one called “Fact to Fiction.” The course emphasizes how the skills required of a journalist can prove invaluable when crafting novels and short stories. I encourage my students
The other day, my wife and I were flying near Sedona, Arizona, heading home to California after visiting relatives in Colorado, when we experienced something that felt a bit like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” though I’d be the
If you’ve read any of my Cordell Logan mystery novels, you’ll know that Logan flies an old, cantankerous, four-seat Cessna 172 Skyhawk. Ditto in Logan’s latest adventure, Deep Fury, set for release Dec. 17. The plane, nicknamed the Ruptured Duck, has
Writing a mystery novel is not unlike piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. Each element must fit seamlessly to reveal the big picture. Introducing humor to this process while navigating tone and plot can be difficult, to say the least. Indeed,
I don’t remember the moment I learned to float in a swimming pool, or to ride a bike without training wheels. The first time I tasted a fresh strawberry has been lost to antiquity. I do, however, remember like it
Flight (2012) With a thunderstorm directly along his route of fight, alcoholic, coke-snorting airline Capt. William “Whip” Whitaker (Denzel Washington), doesn’t ask ATC for a different heading or new altitude, like any actual commercial pilot would. Instead, he accelerates straight