(10) Your wife needs a separate closet for all the shoes she has made. They’re all red velvet. (9) At your wedding reception, your wife’s cousins did shots of maple syrup. (8) There is a hot chocolate bar in your basement. In July. (7) Your father-in-law is a fourteenth generation…

Here is what I learned — I knew something was up when I couldn’t breathe. It was a week before Christmas 2020, and I was walking from the library where I work to a nearby Subway for lunch. The walk takes ten minutes. I’ve done it many times. This time, though, my breathing was heavy. Not…

Does that make me a predator too? — Not many people get to start a library from scratch. I did. On June 5, 2006, I became the fourteenth employee, and first librarian, at the nation’s newest law school, the Charlotte School of Law. Things were great for a while. Then they weren’t. My boss resigned after less than…

A tale of love and loss in America’s heartland — That’s my car, above. The one belching flames. Well, I say it’s mine. What I mean is, I am the legal owner. Was the legal owner. I imagine the burned-out hulk is now sitting in some Iowa scrapyard. The car is a 2004 Toyota Corolla, which I bought in 2005…

It’s an essential outlet, according to scholars — I did not learn about sex in school. I did not learn about it on TV. I did not learn about it from Larry Flynt, Marvin Gaye, or Revenge of the Nerds. Aviaries and apiaries played no part in my sensual education. I didn’t learn about it from my friends…

It is okay that some ideas are never shared. — “When a class discussion goes poorly for me,” writes University of Virginia senior Emma Camp in a recent New York Times article, “I can tell.” She relates the story of advancing a controversial opinion during a feminist theory class in her sophomore year. The idea didn’t go over well. The…

Jurassic Park creator would have some explaining to do nowadays — Who’s on your popular fiction Mount Rushmore? These aren’t your favorite authors, necessarily, but ones you think best represent the genre writer ethos (however you define that). Okay, I’ll start. First up: Stephen King. America’s bogeyman does it all–novels, short stories, movie scripts, comic books. I admit he’s my favorite…

Doing it right can have a big impact — Q: What do John Grisham, Margaret Atwood, Andy Weir, and Stephen King have in common? A: Several things. All are bestselling authors. Award-winning authors. Authors who are written about and studied and among the finest authors working today. And all have, at one time or another, self-published their work. Grisham…

The data may surprise you — “There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie! For instance, Number 1: You can never have sex. Sex equals death, OK?” We know these words by Randy, geek hero of Wes Craven’s Scream, as well as we know “I am not…