Robert

California Zephyr to San Francisco,

by Robert | Nov 3, 2012 | Uncategorized

Patrice and I traveled the California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco this last half of October (2012). I made the trip for myriad reasons––visit Dara and Jim in California, see the Grand Junction, Colorado, train station where Richard Belisle (Read scene from...

Publisher and Writer – Landowner and Serf

by Robert | Jun 12, 2012 | Publishing, Russia, Soviet Union

I’ve spent a great deal of time composing this blog because I am writing a scene, time frame 1961, in which two young men, Rick Belisle and Andrei Byelenko, minor league baseball hopefuls and sons of Slavic immigrants, are discussing in context of their...

Codes, Ciphers and Cryptanalysis

by Robert | Apr 1, 2012 | Book Reviews, Deception

Justin A. Day (pseudonym) with Jan Weeks published The Centerville Code forty-two years too late for me. It is a 10-13 year-old boy adventure book where the heroes require facility in cryptanalysis––the reading of codes. It is the type of story I read as a...

Reformation and Counter-reformation–Traditional Publishing and Indie Publishing

by Robert | Mar 16, 2012 | Publishing

I am a Germanophile. My Wisconsin farmer-neighbors were first and second generation German immigrants. I went to high school with the Greutsmacher, Schenk, Meyer, Schmidt, Langenkampf and Gatterman… families. I served in Germany about ten of my twenty soldier...

Robert Olen Butler and A Small Hotel

by Robert | Feb 25, 2012 | Book Reviews

Robert Olen Butler (A Small Hotel) I mean being a writer is like being a psychoanalyst, but you don’t get any patients. Al Alvarez Robert Olen Butler’s novel A Small Hotel is a gem. It is a diamond. It is an intense moment-by-moment psychological study of a...

Sense of Deception

by Robert | Jan 27, 2012 | Deception

I write about deception not to train the reader in its arcane arts, but to research my novels. There is deception in nearly any situation you can think of––nature, business, politics, or personal relationships––anywhere it might provide someone, or something, an edge....