Blog Posts for John Daniel Orr

It all adds up

John Daniel Orr — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:22:51 -0700

I've been working for ... uh ... I don't know how long ... on a novel. I have never written a novel before, it's mostly new to me. I've written many, many other articles for publication, however, having been a newspaper and magazine writer since the world was young, as Peter O'Toole recites in "My Favorite Year," which is one of my favorite movies. I was going through a rough patch of ...

When the emotional injury is sufficiently deep and painful

John Daniel Orr — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:53:54 -0700

... not much of it need show on the outside. What's the point of showing it?

Get drunk, get naked, dance your brains out

John Daniel Orr — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:23:03 -0700

First, good little Red Room blogger that I am, I will tell you that I am continuing to chip away at the block of stone that is my novel, slowly uncovering the book within. The going is slow, because, you know, I gotta keep going to my evening job and so forth. I am currently working on Chapter 28 and am guessing the book will be finished around Chapter 35 or 40 or 45. I'm not sure. Maybe 35 will ...

25 Things About Me

John Daniel Orr — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:05:05 -0800

Over on Facebook people have been passing this deal around wherein they write 25 things about themselves, and tag 25 friends to ask them to do the same. Generally I have always avoided such things, but a few of my friends wrote them and I found them interesting, so wrote one myself. It follows here. If you are on Facebook and have a desire to do so, hook up with me. Maybe we could play ...

A most amazing image from the inauguration

John Daniel Orr — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:10:58 -0800

Do yourselves a favor: Go to http://gigapan.org and look at the amazing image of the crowd at President Obama's inauguration. The image was made using a significantly kewl device that collects approximately 90,434,876,079,876 bazillion-million pixels of a panorama, using a digital camera, a panning device and a computer, and, for all I know, Mr. Peabody's brain. In this image you can zoom in on ...

Being grateful for separation of church and state

John Daniel Orr — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:15:18 -0800

The U.S. is in Iraq and in Afghanistan, Israel is in Gaza, people are dying, and one of the things I think about it all is I am so grateful that separation of church and state is one of the principals that founded this weird and wonderful nation of ours. Because in America, if a religious radical -- say, a radical "Christian" -- does something ... uh ... untoward ... such as bomb an ...

Charles Matthews is blogging again

John Daniel Orr — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:57:19 -0800

I wrote a while ago about my friend Charles Matthews and his plight ... Now he is back and blogging, although from the care facility where he is staying, plugged into an IV. I get to call him "Pus Brain" now without being insulting, just accurate. Please look at his blog, where all is explained. Happy Thanksgiving, all. I am at work, where I just ate turkey that had been soaked in Jack ...

Where have I been? Lost?

John Daniel Orr — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:27:11 -0800

My deep apologies for not visiting here very often of late, and for not posting at all. I started a straight job in September (I think; I am a lousy historian) and it has taken a lot of time. Plus, I am writing a novel, thank God, and that takes a lot of my limited brain juice. And then, then ... my straight job required some training for a new publication system, and that took more time. And, ...

Just for fun and love

John Daniel Orr — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:24:41 -0700

The last few days I have been letting my novel gestate somewhere in my person, and doing other stuff, such as reading the new Michael Connelly novel for review, and posting a new letter to the memorial site I maintain (at her family's request) for Vala Cupp, who was a wonderful and beautiful blues singer. In the novel I am most of the way through a chapter that is bugging me. It has some ...

Well, I have to say ...

John Daniel Orr — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:14:03 -0700

... that the blog I posted on August 10 about escaping into writing my novel was not well received in certain circles. Not that anybody said anything about it with a comment here -- which in itself is a bit of a comment -- but some people spoke with me about it directly, and not in happy ways. Oh well. But I press ahead, and had already been thinking that I had left out a big issue in that ...