Everyday life is full of oddities, especially in closeup. Here's a portrait of a hose on a patio.

San Francisco Light, March 2026.

Booksky

Everybody's writing. New stats from Publishers Weekly: 4M books published in the US in 2025, 32% more than 2024.

Astounding numbers.

Huh? In his book On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder explains that dictators in the 1930s and 1940s engaged in "salami tactics" —meaning that they sliced off layers of opposition one by one. Sound familiar?

Alfred Hitchcock said drama is real life minus the boring parts.

My #1 rule for writing: Don't try to be clever.

Isn't it preciously ironic that Jeff Bezos, the guy whose fortune began with book sales, just sent the Washington Post book review section to media heaven? (After all, we certainly don't want to encourage reading in the Trump era.)

As far as I can tell, The New York Times Book Review is the only stand alone section of its kind left, now that the Washington Post sent theirs to print heaven. Very sad.

My latest newsletter: Part 2 on tips for improving rhetoric, that is, the art of speaking and writing persuasively. How to follow and break the rules.

See createsend.com/t/t-54E1B4E8...

W/re the Oxford comma:

If you write "My parents, Nicole Kidman and George Clooney are cool," then you'd be famous.

Better to add another comma: "My parents, Nicole Kidman, and George Clooney cool."

The so-called Oxford comma, placed between the 2nd to last and the last item, is more accurate.

Stopping by a lamppost on a snowy evening in Boston.

Tell me why we need the oil in Venezuela.

My third mystery will be published this spring. Now that it's an established series there will be ...

#gregstoneauthor

Squirrel saga continued. Three rascals lively in the ivy — seeking they know not what.

So-called police procedural mysteries are often unsatisfying. With notable exceptions, the authors concentrate on turf wars between departments and agencies, the niceties of DNA testing, ad nauseam descriptions of autopsy processes, etc.

All this “stuff” can get in the way of the story.

I tend to alternate between mystery books and more “serious literature,” for want of a better phrase.

I’m tackling these two next.

#booksky

This little guy makes his home in a tree outside my window. (You'll see him just under the patch of snow. I couldn't zoom in farther on my iPhone.)

To me, he's the very essence of survival. He always cheers me up.

Andrew Campbell | Substack Andy's career with the CIA included tours in the Middle East and South Asia. He then joined the ODNI's National Counterintelligence and Security Center's Insider Threat Task Force. Click to read Andre...

Andrew Campbell

Follow Andy Campbell. He is an honest, eloquent, and righteous man.

andrewcampbell931191.substack.com?utm_campaign...

Just read another fine thriller, Don't Look Back, by Karin Fossum, AKA "The Norwegian Queen of Crime."

Some fine writing, as always:

His grandmother would toss out her latest worry, and he would pick it up, swiftly and easily, as if it were a faulty paper airplane that needed to be refolded.

You've probably heard the myth that Jack Kerouac typed out On the Road in a single burst on a 120-foot-long scroll.

Not exacly, as a new article from The American Scholar shows.

File this under the heading "Spontaneous Composition" rarely exists.

See: theamericanscholar.org/scrolling-th...

To all writers:

James Baldwin said it best, no?

"Working on a novel, you get bugged by one or two people. You don’t know where they come from ... But suddenly a girl or a boy comes along and claims your attention ... There’s a story ... how are you going to tell it?"

Down the road I'll be telling my grandchildren that I voted against Trump three times and that he was a vile, criminal, crude, clueless, and ignorant president who did his best to destroy our constitution.

Someday, the politicians who have spoken out against him will be remembered as heroes.

Here is my latest newsletter with tips on rhetoric — the art of speaking and writing persuasively. See what Yoda, JFK, Churchill, and, yes, 007 have to say.

createsend.com/t/t-54E1B4E8...

How times have changed.

In this April 14, 1947 file photo, a long line winds toward the entrance to Morrisania Hospital in the Bronx, where doctors were offering smallpox shots. (AP Photo/File)

A tree in Belmont, MA.

I just finished the superb novel Bel Canto.

The New York Times rated it #98 on a recent list of the 100 best books of this century. IMHO, it should have been in the top 10.

This is idiotic. Your call in the order it was received? How can a one-item series have an order? What if your mom said you were born in the order that I delivered you?

NO: Companies should say, "Calls [plural] will be answered in the order they were received."

3,000 or so, I’d say.

Attended the No Kings rally today in Lexington, MA. Peaceful protest is as American as apple pie.