It's Monday, so here's another new episode from the third and final season of The Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast! 1/9 #historicalfiction #audiodrama #podcast

Happy 4th Birthday to Cora! Born literally on the streets of Barbados, now living a life of relative luxury her ancestors coule never have imagined. (Her favourite part of the party will be tearing the wrapping paper gently into ribbons. My favourite is the annual pointy hat.)

While walking past the book section in Walmart my eyes were improbably drawn to Mats Sundin's teeth. How is his bridgework —I am assuming after his storied hockey career— the brightest feature on the cover of his biography? Was the graphic designer for or against that choice? (It was no accident.)

It's Monday, and for the next several months every Monday will see a new episode from the third and final season of The Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast! #historicalfiction #audiodrama #podcast 1/6

Guys? That herb-stripping tool WORKS! That's one pull of rosemary from my balcony herb garden through a plastic doohicky that cost a couple of bucks, and I'm ready to chop it up! I feel like I should have filmed that for an infomercial. It worked even better than I imagined.

I enjoy the Facebook Memories feature. I especially enjoy it when things like the World Cup roll around and I get a window into Cups of the past. Here's a gem from two World Cups ago:

After a seven-week hiatus bridged with a Q&A mailbag bonus episode, the third and final season of The Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast begins today! #historicalfiction #audiodrama #podcast 1/3

Spotted this gem while wandering around the internet. Safe disposal of used engine oil circa 1963 according to Popular Mechanics? Dig a hole, pour gravel in it, and then empty your oil pan onto the gravel. Cover the whole thing over with dirt, then presumably walk away while whistling a jaunty tune.

I have a lot of questions on how this Dairy Queen and MoneyMart ended up with the same street frontage. Who owns the building? Which business came in first? What did negotiations for putting those signs together look like?

Can I say a thing as a Roman #historynerd in general who is researching the 4th-6th centuries CE specifically for the last few years? This mosaic portrait of Justinian from the basilica in Ravenna is on the cover of 80+% of all relevant books and 100% of those with colour plates. It's too much.

It's been three weeks since Season Two of the Tape Recorder Trilogy wrapped up. Season Three will kick off four weeks from now on June 22nd, with new episodes coming out every Monday after that from then until the series finale sometime in autumn. 1/3

You know, it's funny. Twenty years later I still don't think jumping out of a plane was all that crazy, but more and more I question why I decided to do it in a Hawaiian shirt while wearing khaki pants...

I would 100% believe this of self-published books, but this is staggering to hear that it is true of the stuff curated and promoted by the Big Five publishing houses as well. (Screengrab from talezine.substack.com. I don't believe they have a Bluesky account yet.) #publishing #books #writing

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then. I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes." Walt Whitman, the sassiest 19th Century American poet.

My dog sleeps next to me in my home office. She just made the funniest sigh while getting ready for another nap. "Hnnngh..." Then, "HNNNNGGHH!" when the first one didn't get it done. (Get what done? Who knows. She's a dog trying to get comfortable. I have to assume the sound is part of that.)

Look, I love shrimp, and who doesn't love a deal? But some things are supposed to cost more than $5, Walmart. Even the regular price leaves me with questions I don't want the answers to, like how many people die each year eating bargain-priced shrimp rings?

Here's my haul from a charity used book sale in support of a local curling club. I actually already have a copy of the J. Michael Straczynski screenwriting book, but this one is stamped as being from the library of TV Ontario. For $4, I'll upgrade my copy to one with that kind of pedigree.

Here's the art we ended up using on the cover with the story continuing on Page 5. (We had quite a little editorial meeting over how appropriate that photo caption label was for a family newspaper...)

At my first community newspaper job 20 years ago I volunteered to walk back and forth by a nesting pair of red-winged blackbirds that were terrorizing a neighbourhood until we got art of a divebomb attack. Ever since, one of my everyday superpowers is I always know when one of those birds is around.

It's window-washing day! (My dog is not a fan. This is her perched on my shoulder admiring a blank wall in the exact opposite direction of the man dangling from a rope outside our livingroom window. Nothing to see... Nothing to see...)

I'm down in Chatham, Ontario, visiting my folks to file my taxes and get Mom to record her parts for Season Three of my podcast audio drama. This morning I enjoyed a cup of coffee in the hot tub while my dog Cora supervised.

Mom has taken up painti g in her retirement. Here's one of her most recent works. She's particularly proud of the feathers and the bark texture.

This week's episode is the second of a two-parter where I use the story of the Colossus of Nero to allow the narrator to cover much of Roman history very briefly while actually talking about the 100-foot-tall bronze statue towering over Rome in the first centuries after the birth of Christ. 1/8

In the home stretch of the book that would become the second season of The Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast I found myself with a problem. I had written a proudly Carthaginian character who hates the Romans but whose immortality will include living through the entirety of the Roman Empire. 1/9

Today's episode of the Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast is a rare one where I confess I think it worked better in the book than in an audio drama format. 1/5 #historicalfiction #audiodrama #podcast

Spotted this little guy while out for a walk today. Even as an almost-fresh hatchling, he was the size of a small garter snake. He's going to grow up to be something terrifying to come across in the woods, assuming a bird or bike doesn't get him while he's out basking in today's sunshine.

Here's a fun fact. James Pickens Jr. (the actor who has played Dr. Webber in every season of Grey's Anatomy) was 51 when the pilot aired. Ellen Pompeo was playing an intern in that pilot. She's 56 now.

Today's episode of the Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast wraps up many of the storylines explored in the Second Season so far. It concludes last week's two-parter on the Second Punic War. It finishes the three-episode story of the narrator's friend Marco. 1/5

Happy birthday to my lovely wife (who woke me up at 7 am like a kid on Christmas morning because it was time to open the presents that have been sitting on our kitchen table all week, mocking her...)!