Jeffrey K. Walker's Blog, page 13

Your Write Turn: Selling Your Words

Yep, the book publishing world has been turned upside down. There are few markets that were earlier or more thoroughly disrupted than publishing. Well, maybe music. The gatekeepers of yesteryear just aren’t keeping the gates much anymore. The Big Five publishers used to have a chokehold on access to the market — editors, bookstores, advertising […]

The Struggle for Irish Independence

One of the guilty pleasures for any historical novelist is having a grown-up reason to wallow around in research about wherever and whenever you choose. In my case, the self-indulgence may rise to the level of mortal sin. Having long been a semi-professional Irishman, it’s little wonder I chose to set my third novel, No […]

Your Write Turn: Over the Hump of Self-Doubt

In the first two posts of my series, Your Write Turn, I tried to convince you that you can pursue any number of new career choices after the age of 50—including becoming a writer—and I gave you a personal inventory to run through in determining what you bring by way of resources and skills to […]

Flying in the BUFF (The Prequel)

[You can read other installments of my “Flying in the BUFF” posts HERE!] This is the 126th blog I’ve posted since January of 2017—which amounts to 175,000 words. That’s almost two novels. Which I probably should have been writing instead of posts about Toilets of the World or Playing with Sticks. According to WordPress’s fancy-schmanzy […]

Your Write Turn – Taking Stock of Yourself

I got a lot of traffic on a post I did two weeks ago about new careers after 50. Since my own newest career is writing, I thought I’d follow-up by talking about this crazy idea of becoming an author at the wizened old age of 50 or (gasp!) even older. Kids these days… The […]

Write Turn – Taking Stock of Yourself

I got a lot of traffic on a post I did two weeks ago about new careers after 50. Since my own newest career is writing, I thought I’d follow-up by talking about this crazy idea of becoming an author at the wizened old age of 50 or (gasp!) even older. Kids these days… The […]

Your Write Turn – New Career(s) After 50?

I’m 59 and can’t hold a job. Or more accurately, I can’t stick with a career. Well, at least not like my Dad did. I mean, he really only had one. I’m on Number Nine. We subconsciously use our parents as our default yardstick with which to measure our lives. It must be a thing, […]

New Career(s) After 50?

I’m 59 and can’t hold a job. Or more accurately, I can’t stick with a career. Well, at least not like my Dad did. I mean, he really only had one. I’m on Number Nine. We subconsciously use our parents as our default yardstick with which to measure our lives. It must be a thing, […]

The Perversity of US News Rankings

We Americans love rankings—sports standings, 12 Best Places for Hawaiian Poke. You name it, we rank it. Of course, these are the essential ingredients in clickbait, too. Let’s all fess up—no living human has ever been able to resist “15 Child Actors and What They’re Doing  Now” (which is inevitably ranked from Best to Scott […]

Life in the Pre-GPScene Era

Although people have been writing about this for like a decade already, I just read an article about how our complete reliance on turn-by-turn GoogleMaps instructions is rotting our collective hippocampus. That’s a part of our brain that Does Many Important Things, e.g., storing memories, learning stuff, regulating emotions. Suffice to say, Godzilla had a […]