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- Cordell Logan Series
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’m often reminded of what actor Edmund Gwenn is purported to have remarked on his deathbed: “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Drop the mic, Mr. Gwenn....
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 was yesterday the first time I flew as pilot in command of an airplane. We’d practiced landings that clear August morning, my flight instructor, Bert J. Colter, and...
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 into the storm “to get through it faster”. The jet subsequently suffers a major mechanical malfunction requiring Whitaker to fly upside down before making a crash landing and...
10. The Great Santini (1979) Robert Duvall plays Marine Lt. Col. “Bull” Meechum, a hard-charging F-4 Phantom pilot caught between wars in 1962. With no enemy to dogfight, Meechum takes out his aggressions on his family, and especially his emotionally sensitive, teen-age son, played by Timothy Hutton. Blythe Danner poignantly plays his wife and the mother struggling to keep her family intact amid Bull’s at-times frightening, alcohol-fueled irascibility....
The first time my wife and I visited Italy, we went to Florence and Tuscany. To say it was among the best vacations we ever took would be like saying espresso is mildly stimulating. There was so much to see and appreciate. The Uffizi Galleries. Michelangelo’s 17-foot marble statue of The David. The Leaning Tower of Pisa. The Ponte Vecchio. The food. The wine. The Italian people, so...
Every detail about that glorious day you soloed is burned into your memory like the day your kids were born. Every time you hear an aircraft overhead you automatically look up, wishing that was you. You forget all the greasers you made this month and stew over that one really not-so-good landing. You pat your plane like a trusty steed after safely arriving at your destination. You try...