Tag: books

SubscribeStar Saturday: The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2026, Part II: Non-Fiction

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Today’s post includes Amazon Affiliate links to the books referenced. I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you. If a book is linked, it is an Amazon Affiliate link.

See Part I here, and read the full post here. —TPP

I’m back with Part II of The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2026, with a focus on non-fiction. As a history teacher and a writer primarily focused on non-fiction, I possess a particular interest in non-fiction writing of every stripe. While I do love reading history, I enjoy reading broadly, so today’s list will have works of non-fiction from multiple genres.

Typically I leave the full list behind the paywall for paid subscribers; however, as several of these authors are indie/self-published and/or newer authors, I would like to boost their works more broadly (and, naturally, gain access to those sweet, sweet affiliate clicks). So, here are four books I’ve read and/or am currently reading that I highly recommend you order:

  • Nicholas R. Ochs, Age of Rot: A Right Wing Dissident’s Prison Dispatches from a Torn America – Nicholas Ochs was arrested following the Epiphany Protests for covering the events as an independent journalist. His association with the Proud Boys made him an easy target for Biden’s Justice Department, and he ended up with a four-year sentence (!) in a maximum security prison in Butler, North Carolina, where he faced a number of abuses (including an arbitrary stint in solitary confinement in winter without a mattress or blanket for his cot; he burned so many calories trying to stay warm that he became dangerously emaciated). This book is his collected prison writings, and it is a stark window into the political persecution and prosecutions that faced so many patriots in 2021.
  • Landis Brown, Life Under the Shadow of the Almighty: A Journey Through Psalm 91 – My pastor while I was living down in Lamar wrote this book. Pastor Dana, as we call him (his middle name is “Dana”), had an issue while preparing his manuscript: his editor backed out of the project. Pastor Dana contacted me and asked if I could edit the last four chapters, which I did last spring. I finally ordered a physical copy earlier this week, so I am excited to read the first two chapters (and re-read the four I edited). It’s an interesting blend of scholarly work and devotional.
  • H.H. Scullard and A.A.M. van der Heyden, Shorter Atlas of the Classical World – I picked up this delightful little survey of the classical world, which focuses on ancient Greece and Rome, when I was a teenager. I devoured it, cover-to-cover, and I love all the maps and the lithographic plates.
  • Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults: An Analysis of the Major Cult Systems in the Present Christian Era – I borrowed—and never returned, gulp!—a copy of this book from my Aunt Cheryl some years ago. It is the “textbook” on the various cults of the twentieth century from the perspective of an Evangelical Protestant Christian theologian and historian. Martin gives detailed historical information about the foundation of a number of cults, including the Nation of Islam and Mormonism, and offers Christians useful theological and historical grounds for arguing against these movements. My (well, my aunt’s) edition is from the twenty-fourth printing in 1977, and it certainly reflects the cultic activity of the time (some of the movements are now just footnotes in religious history, while others are still thriving).

More below the punch. That said, each of these books if quite affordable on Amazon, and you can scoop them all up for under $70.71 at the time of writing.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Lazy Sunday CCCXC: Summer Reading Lists of Yesteryear

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Book titles in this post have an Amazon Affiliate link. I receive a portion of purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you. —TPP

It’s been one of those rare, near-perfect Sundays, the kind of Sunday that is so peaceful, it’s hard to believe it’s possible. I know that Sunday is the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath, a day of rest, but I don’t think it’s ever really been that way for me.

Growing up, Sunday was a marathon of excessive churching, in which a hot, sweaty nap would be squeezed between seemingly endless church services and band practices. I’m very thankful for that upbringing in many ways, but it always meant Sundays were an exhausting scramble, usually topped off with finishing math homework after we finally got home at 9:30 PM.

As an adult, Sundays have become a working day. After church, the day is spent prepping for the week, with lesson plans, scheduling music lessons, and the like. Sometimes that includes hammering out succulent blog posts for the week ahead.

Top that off with the “Sunday scaries”—that vague sense of dread and anxiety that settles in around 4 or 5 PM on a Sunday afternoon—and I’ve never much cared for the day, or thought of it as all that restful. Church is great (and you should go, just probably not for eight hours every Sunday), but by the time I’m home from it, the weekend is essentially over and work begins. It’s why I try to take Saturdays as my “Sabbath,” when I truly do try to rest and recuperate.

That said, today has been what I think Sundays are supposed to be. Dr. Wife and I had a quiet morning and headed to church, after which we had lunch and picked up groceries. We came back and knocked out some chores around the house and in the yard, and then took a glorious nap with the dogs, from which we both got up from a short while before I wrote this post. Minecraft Camp starts tomorrow and I have a few lessons to schedule, but I don’t feel rushed. Dr. Wife usually has to drive back on Sundays to North Carolina, but because of the nature of her new rotation (which starts tomorrow), she won’t have to leave until tomorrow morning, and she’ll leave when I head out for camp.

The net effect is that it’s been a glorious and restful Sunday. Even as we’ve gotten things done around the house, it’s been a day both to celebrate and worship the Lord with other believers and time for rest and reflection. There is a peace over the house that I’m almost hesitant to articulate, lest the momentary blessing be somehow broken.

Well, enough of that waxing poetic (and complaining about going to church, which is somewhat hypocritical of me). For today’s installment of Lazy Sunday, I thought I’d look back at various Summer Reading Lists of yesteryear:

So there you have it! A little late, but a Lazy Sunday bursting with summertime freshness.

Happy Reading—and Happy Sunday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2026, Part I: Short Fiction

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Today’s post includes Amazon Affiliate links to the books referenced. I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you. If a book is linked, it is an Amazon Affiliate link. —TPP

It’s summertime! That means yours portly is getting in a ton of reading, especially in my favorite format: short fiction.

“Short fiction” here is a catch-all for both short story collections and shorter novels/novellas. Two of the works on today’s list are technically novels, but they’re both 250 pages or fewer (in the case of Jake Barter’s The Sniper, the book is exactly 250 pages). 250 pages might seem generous, but these are works that can be read over the course of several evenings, and are paced briskly enough that they won’t be piled on your nightstand for months or even years.

Typically I leave the full list behind the paywall for paid subscribers; however, as several of these authors are indie/self-published, I would like to boost their works more broadly (and, naturally, gain access to those sweet, sweet affiliate clicks). So, here are four books I’ve read and/or am currently reading that I highly recommend you order:

  • Jake Barter, The Sniper – “Jake Barter” is the nom de plume of blogger photog, proprietor of the excellent blog Orion’s Cold Fire. As far as I can tell, this book is his first outing. It’s the next on my “to-read” list after the next entry, but knowing photog’s writing, I can already recommend it. He’s been working on this book for years, and it’s not a hastily slapped-together book like one of mine.
  • Erang, Midnight Under the Monsters’ Mask – “Erang” is the nom de plume of, well, Erang, a mysterious, masked French musician who is among the pioneers of dungeon synth. I’ve just started reading Midnight in the English translation, and the stories so far are delightfully creepy. It’s a mix of horror and weird fiction that really shows Erang’s early exposure to horror flicks as a kid in the 1980s. Erang’s whole schtick is championing imagination over all else, and he creates in his music entire fantasy realms. Having listened to his music for years—over a decade, at this point—I can “hear” it in his writing.
  • Various authors, Amelia: Counterrevolution (the second anthology from authors of the “Lemurverse“) – this collection of short stories and poems found inspiration in Amelia, the viral, pro-British, pro-nationalist, anti-immigration character of a government-sanctioned video “game” that was intended to spook teens away from online “radicalization” (basically, becoming right-wing). The fatal flaw, however, is that the game designers made Amelia into a cute goth chick with a chic aesthetic and, well, commonsense arguments against flooding Britain with unassimilable invaders. It’s a fun collection and priced right at just $5.99 in paperback. Note that it does use AI-generated images, but not writing, as illustrations between stories, so if that cuts against your principles, be forewarned. However, the writing is 100% human!
  • John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids – a classic of 1950s British sci-fi, Triffids is a chilling tale of a world in which everyone is blind—and giant, carnivorous plants called “triffids” shuffle around killing people. But there’s way more to it than that; the work is post-apocalyptic, but it’s quaint in how “high-trust” post-apocalyptic Britain is portrayed—a stark reminder of how much that once-great nation has changed. I read Wyndham’s Foul Play Suspected earlier this year and can heartily recommend it as a tense crime thriller with an appropriately English sense of restraint and pacing.

More on Amelia and Triffids below the punch. I’ve read both of those in their entirety. That said, each of these books if quite affordable on Amazon, and if you’re a fan of short stories or shorter novels/novellas, you can scoop them all up for under $50.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

SubscribeStar Saturday: Pulps and a Preview

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

As my summer break wanes to a close—I return to work this Thursday, 7 August 2025—I’ve been frantically making the most of time and trying to do as much writing as possible.  Rather than writing for the blog, it’s mostly been fiction writing.

After The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard took eleventh place in overall sales in Hans G. Schantz‘s quarterly Based Book Sale, I decided it might be worthwhile to return to fiction writing.

First, I took an entire day to make audiobook versions of Inspector Gerard and my collection of non-fiction travel essays, Arizonan Sojourn, because Amazon has a nifty feature that creates an audiobook from your text using a range of computer-generated voices (I picked “English 5,” which has a great British accent); listening back to my writing (I needed to edit certain pronunciations for the computer-generated voiceover), I remembered how fun fiction writing can be.

[Note that most of the links in the preceding paragraph, as well as all links about books in this post, are Amazon Affiliate links.  I receive a portion of proceeds from any sales made through this links, at no additional cost to you. —TPP]

Second, I checked out some books in the Schantziverse about writing fiction, specifically pulp fiction.  I’ve always enjoyed short stories, ranging from literary fiction to fast-paced pulps, but in the world of online self-publishing, writing quick, punchy, pulpy tales of adventure and intrigue seems to be the way to go.

I purchased three books in particular to dive into the world of pulp writing (again, all Amazon Affiliate links ahead; I receive a portion of purchases made through these links, blah, blah, blah):

Of these Bell’s How to Write Pulp Fiction has been the most useful so far. To be fair, I haven’t ready any of Cheah’s book yet, so I cannot yet give any guidance into how efficacious it is for the budding pulp writer.  Bell’s book, however, is full of actionable (and action-packed!) advice that I have already began incorporating into my own writing.

Cowen’s The Pulp Mindset was the first book I purchased on the topic.  It is not a “how-to” guide (as the author reiterates frequently), but rather a “call to action” for writers to embrace the “pulp mindset” of NewPub.  “NewPub” is Cowen’s term for the new-ish world of self-publishing, one in which gripping, fast-paced storytelling and genre fiction dominate over slower-paced literary fiction.  For Cowen, the distinction is almost a political one:  the world of “OldPub” is an ossified world of progressive gatekeepers who push a certain ideology over actual quality (although Cowen makes it clear that he is not attempting to make a political point in the book, it’s fairly clear that he has little patience for the stodgy editors of the “OldPub” world promoting woke fiction at the expense of good storytelling).

The book has some issues—it’s clear that Cowen is padding out his page count to stretch the book to something he can charge $7.29 for (I’m guilty of this as well; I suspect all writers are to an extent), and the editing leaves a lot to be desired (I’m guilty of this, too)—but it also offers a fascinating history of the pulps, and how they developed.

I’ll save that history for another time, but just skim through these Wikipedia entries on Argosy magazine and Frank Munsey, about whom Cowen dedicates an entire chapter, and you’ll quickly see that the roots of the pulps go way back into the nineteenth century (and really, probably back to the dawn of storytelling itself).  Cowen argues—rather persuasively—that the future of fiction lies in the past, to the golden age of the pulps.

Technologically, we’re at the point where we can replicate the affordable nature of pulps through Kindle Direct Publishing and other self-publishing platforms.  Naturally, self-publishing has always suffered from lots of low-quality writing (and AI has only exacerbated the problem), but for those willing to put in the hours and the sweat, it offers the opportunity for dedicated writers to reach a wider audience at a price anyone can afford.

An example:  the author Mariella Hunt began self-publishing just a couple of years ago.  As I recall (and I hope she’ll forgive this rough paraphrase of a past conversation), she told me that she had always been a writer, but needed to start making some money from it to pitch in with her family.  Her book The Sea Rose, takes place in (I believe) an alternate Georgian England in which mermaids are real.  That spawned a sequel, The Sea King, part of her Lords & Ladies of the Sea series.  She used the now-defunct Kindle Vella serialized publishing platform to release the second book in chapters.  Her ability to write compelling cliffhangers and digestible chapters, from what I could tell, made her very popular on the platform.

I have long wanted to write a collection of weird fiction, and to experiment more with the pulp format.  One of Bell’s key pieces of advice was to maintain a file of story ideas, and earlier this week I hammered out a long list of ideas.

Then I started to write.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

TBT: Stone Cold Sunday

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

With the dawn of the Second Trumpian Golden Age, I’ve been reflecting a bit about the First.  Trump’s first administration, in retrospect, was less-focused and more carnival-esque than what his second appears to be.  Trump is a wiser man, and knows who he can—and cannot—trust.

But part of the fun of the first Trump presidency was the cavalcade of grifters, courtiers, and hangers-on who hitched their wagon to Trump’s star.

One of those was Roger Stone, who actually was an important figure while also embodying the kind of naughty, playful, mirthful, bawdy side of the Trump phenomenon.  I wrote a review of his book Stone’s Rules: How to Win at Politics, Business, and Style back in 2019, and it seemed like an appropriate time to revisit it.

Note that the link above is an Amazon Affiliate link; if you purchase anything through that link, I receive a portion of the proceeds, at no additional cost to you.  I’m required to point that out.

With that, here is 10 February 2019’s “Stone Cold Sunday“:

Read More »

TBT^2: Inspector Gerard eBook is Coming 1 April 2021 (Out NOW in Paperback)!

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

It’s hard to believe that I released The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot three years ago (well, almost three years ago—give it another couple of weeks).  It was my first foray into self-publishing, and it was a fun experience.  I still need to go back and edit some of the embarrassing typographical and grammatical errors in the book, which I will get around to doing eventually.

Since then I’ve released a second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It has not done as well as Inspector Gerard, but at the time of writing, Amazon has it marked down to $11.16 for the paperback version.  That is a steal, as the list price is usually $20, so it’s 44% off.  It’s actually a pretty good book.  Of course, I’m biased.

This week is testing for middle school students at my school, and it was during this same testing week in 2021 and again in 2023 that I slapped together my books.  There’s something about having that extra hour or two a day without my Middle School Music Ensemble class that makes it feasible for me to compile and edit my writings into book form.  I am currently working on my third book, Offensive Poems: With Pictures, but I’m not sure if I’ll manage to get it written and edited this week, even with the extra time.

Still, I hope that by the time you’re reading this post that I’ll have put a dent into it.  The biggest challenge is going to be converting all of the hand-drawn pictures into a digital format.  I imagine the formatting of the entire book will be a huge headache, but it’s just a matter of making the appropriate sacrifices to Microsoft Word and Kindle Direct Publishing.

With that, here is 23 March 2023’s “TBT: Inspector Gerard eBook is Coming 1 April 2021 (Out NOW in Paperback)!“:

Read More »

September 2023 Bandcamp Friday; NEW RELEASE!

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Ah, yes, Bandcamp Friday has returned, which means I hope you will consider pitching in a few bucks to buy my music—or my second book!  After a long hiatus over the summer months, this celebration of indie musicians is back.

The first Friday of a bunch of months in 2023—February, March, April, May, August, September, October, November, and December—will feature this pro-indie music observance, a day on which Bandcamp waives its usual 15% commission on sales.

In other words, when you buy my music, almost 100% of it goes to me, instead of almost 85%.

To celebrate, I have a brand new release:  Spooky Season!  Spooky Season is a collection of seven new compositions with a spooky, autumnal vibe, perfect for pumpkin-spiced living and ghostly vibes.  These tracks won’t hit streaming platforms until October, but you can purchase them now via Bandcamp!

Spooky Season is just $5, and includes full scores and individual parts for every track—a $28 value!—plus a bonus track.  It’s also crammed with videos, handwritten manuscripts, and other goodies.

Currently, my entire discography of eleven releases is $18.39, a savings of 50%, which is not bad for eleven releases.  That’s $1.67 per release—not too shabby!  To purchase the full discography, click on any release, and you’ll see the option to purchase all of them.

You can also listen to a ton of my tunes on YouTube (and it’s free to subscribe!).

I’m also selling all of my paintings for $10, with free shipping in the United States, regardless of how many you purchase.  They’re one of kind, so once a painting is purchased, it’s gone.

I’ve also joined Society6, a website that lets artists upload their designs, which can they be printed onto all manner of products (like this throw pillow, or this duvet cover).  Why not get a bookbag with a mouthy droid on it?

I only get 10% of the sales made there, but some of the stuff looks really good—I really want these notebooks with my “Desert View” painting on it (now SOLD!).  Some of them are straight-up goofy, like this church doodle I made celebrating the presidential pardon of Roger Stone (the description for the piece is “Anger your friends with this doodle commemorating the presidential pardon of America’s most dapper political operative“).

I have a few new paintings in the works, and hope to be attending the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival to try to hawk some of my works.  We’ll see how that goes!

My first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot, is $10 in paperback, and just $5 on Kindle.

My second and newest book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures, is $20 in paperback and $10 on Kindle.

Finally, after I finish Offensive Poems: With Pictures, my planned third book, I’ll be uploading those doodles to Society6 as well.  I have high hopes (perhaps naïvely) for this book, but we shall see.  The doodles are some of my best work—and in glorious color—and without notebook paper lines!

Thanks again for your support!

Happy Friday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2023

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

It’s that time of year again:  summer!  That means we’re due for The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2023!

For new readers, my criteria is pretty straightforward.  To quote myself from the 2016 list:

The books listed here are among some of my favorites.  I’m not necessarily reading them at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t!

Pretty vague, I know.  Additionally, I usually feature three books, plus an “Honorable Mention” that’s usually worth a read, too.

For those interested, here are the prior installments:

With that, here’s The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2023:

1.) “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Other Stories from The Sketch Book, Washington Irving – There are dozens of compilations of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.  The book has been in continuous print since its first publication in 1819-1820, which is remarkable:  at the time, American literature was in its infancy, struggling to differentiate itself from the flood of European novels, poetry, and short stories coming out of the Old World at the time.  Irving, along with his contemporary James Fenimore Cooper, launched American literature beyond our own hardscrabble frontiers into the wider world, and both authors became the first Americans whose works were read widely in Europe.

I picked up this Signet Classics edition (ISBN: 0-451-5301-8) approximately fifteen years ago, largely on the strength of its two most famous short stories:  “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”  These tales account for the vast popularity of the collection, but aside from a few other essays on American life, the vast majority of the collection takes place in England.

One of the most memorable essays from my first reading was “Westminster Abbey,” about the impressive abbey near London.  Here’s the first very first paragraph:

On one of those sober and rather melancholy days in the latter part of autumn when the shadows of morning and evening almost mingle together, and throw a gloom over the decline of the year, I passed several hours in rambling about Westminster Abbey. There was something congenial to the season in the mournful magnificence of the old pile, and as I passed its threshold it seemed like stepping back into the regions of antiquity and losing myself among the shades of former ages.

How’s that for setting the scene and the mood?  There is something mystical about that period in late autumn that is “rather melancholy,” and everything seems to have a certain shadowy gloominess cast over it.  I’ve always thought that the best time to learn about colonial American history—especially the history of New England—is in late autumn, when that damp crispness enters the air.  It feels like Plymouth Rock, or Salem Town, or the backwoods of New Hampshire.

This summer, I hope to reread this collection for the first time in fifteen years.  The essays on Christmas—“Christmas Eve,” “Christmas Day,” and “Christmas Dinner“—are instantly charming, and explain much of the more ancient English traditions of celebrating Christmas, including ghost stories around the fire (which became more popular in the Victorian era).

Needless to say, The Sketch Book has had an immense influence on my own writing, particular my travel writing.  I’m no Washington Irving (or Geoffrey Crayon), but my second book Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures clearly illustrates Irving’s influence upon my writing style.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Lazy Sunday CCIV: Myersvision, Part VI

The Portly Politico2 Comments

When it comes to Lazy Sunday, I really put emphasis on the “Lazy” part of that title.  When I find something good, I milk it dry, which is probably what will happen to Bigfoot if we ever get the big lug into captivity.  Imagine drinking “Squatch Juice”—the sweet, slightly gamey, milk of the female Bigfoot (Bigfemme?), packed full of anti-oxidants and invisibility serum.

Uh, ahem… I digress.  Right now I’m only milking Bigfoot metaphorically in the form of Audre Myers‘s excellent Bigfoot-related posts.  March inadvertently became “Bigfoot March Madness” at The Portly Politico, to the point that even Audre expressed concern that she was doing irreparable damage to this site’s reputation, to which I responded (again, metaphorically), “What reputation?”

And so I digress yet again.  Here are three editions of Myersvision from 8, 15, and 22 March 2023, all about our favorite, elusive, hairy cryptid:

  • “Myersvision: The Books” – Audre offers up a short bibliography of Bigfoot books, including some by Jeff Meldrum, a Full Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University.
  • “Myersvision: Other Sources” – Here Audre offers up some other Bigfoot sources, including an interview with Jane Goodall (who herself falsified some of the wild findings she made concerning apes).
  • “Myersvision: Structures” – Bigfoot is a builder (perhaps he should sign up for my Minecraft Camp).  There are apparently eerily similar structures that are attributed to Bigfoot, which suggests a certain degree of intelligence in our mystery pal.

That’s it for this latest retrospective into Myersvision.  There’s more milk to come!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Phone it in Friday XXXV: My Second Book is Live on Kindle!

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

In case the daily reminders at the top of every post this week weren’t reminder enough, I’ve released my second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It’s a collection of travel essays I’ve accumulated over the last four years, and it’s available now on Amazon.  The Kindle version went live today, so if you pre-ordered, you can now read the book!

I’ve been eager to release a second book ever since I published The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot back in March 2021, but various time constraints always seemed to interfere.  Ironically, maintaining the blog—even with help from good friends—is one such hinderance, while also serving as the source material for this book!

Blogging daily (today marks the 1545th consecutive day of blogging) is great fun, but it takes time.  Longtime readers will probably have noticed the increase in guest posts (especially from Audre Myers and Ponty), as well as lighter posts from yours portly.  Those lighter posts are partially out of necessity—in order to maintain my busy work and private music lessons schedule, I have to write some fluffier posts here from time to time.

No worries—I have not given up on political writing entirely, nor have I abandoned writing seriously about music, faith, art, etc.  Sometimes, I just need to upload some pictures of a LEGO set I built and call it a day.

That said, blogging daily is also the source of Arizonan Sojourn, as blogging daily will likely be the source of my next book (topic to be determined).  Pulled from four years of travel essays, with a particular focus on the six-part trip my older brother and I took to Arizona in December 2022, the book regales readers with tales of my not-so-outrageous exploits.

So, I found myself last week with a modicum of extra time because Middle School students were taking some horrendous standardized test, after which they were dismissed for the day.  That removed my duty to teach Middle Music Ensemble for a few days, and that extra fifty-six minutes each day, along with the lack of private music lessons with Middle Schoolers, enabled me to complete the compiling, organizing, and edition of Arizonan Sojourn.

Unlike Inspector Gerard, I also made sure to proofread and revise Arizonan Sojourn much more carefully this time.  I cannot guarantee it is free of grammatical errors—I found one as soon as I published the book (it is now fixed)—but it should be substantially less embarrassing in this regard than Gerard was.

That’s all to say that you should buy it.  I’ll also be uploading a PDF manuscript of the entire work to my Subscribe Star page for $5 and up subscribers tomorrow.

Of course, it’s much better to have a physical copy, no?

Here’s where you can pick it up:

Happy Reading!

—TPP