What Makes a Character Unsympathetic?

Gosh, I need to apologize for going so long without posting anything here! I caught a nasty flu over the holidays that derailed my workflow and has set me behind on everything. I have several big posts that I was working on for The Granite Notebook before the holidays and will try to get those finished soon.

But today I wanted to write something that is a little bit more extemporaneous.

This weekend my wife and I happened to watch the movie Arthur (1981), which we had never seen before. In fact, although it was a hit (the fourth highest grossing film of 1981), I’m not sure I had ever heard of it before this weekend. Arthur is a romantic comedy starring Dudley Moore (Arthur) and Liza Minnelli in which Moore plays a wealthy man-child whose only aspirations in life are to stay perpetually drunk and party. Continue reading

Reading from my novel The Young Garden Manifesto

Did you read The Young Garden Manifesto yet? Did you not read it yet? (for shame!)

Here I am reading one of the New York City vignette chapters from the book. If you haven’t read it yet, this is a small taste of what you have been missing! If you have read it, this is the chapter that begins with, “To be read aloud.” Several readers have expressed interest in hearing a reading of this chapter, so this is it in the author’s own voice. Enjoy!
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