Jeffrey K. Walker's Blog, page 22

Jazz and Dada

My second novel, Truly Are the Free, is coming out on the 30th of November, which has me rather stoked. I put the first word of the book down on paper—or in electrons, as is The Modern Way—the 29th of September last year, so I’ve been living with this particular set of characters for 14 […]

How to Be a Good Grown Up

[At the time this post goes up, I’ll be somewhere over the North Pole, flying the Great Circle Route to Tokyo, then another 8 hours on to Jakarta. I believe this to be the Longest Plane Trip on Earth, but I’m willing to be challenged. I’m reposting one of my more popular posts for this […]

Hyphenated-Americans

I took the day off from Writing Important Stuff yesterday to head over to the NASCAR track in Richmond with Kay-Kay. This was not for stock car racing, but rather for the Central Virginia Celtic Festival & Highland Games. Come to think of it, “highland games” and “stock car racing” may have more in common […]

Other Voices

I turned over my second book, Truly Are the Free, to the copy editor on Friday. That’s always a Highly Emotional Event, since it’s the moment one’s beautiful, finely crafted, and perfectly constructed literary stroke of genius gets turned into… a product. In the end, a book is something you sell. Like soap or sneakers […]

On the Joys and Sorrows of Being a Cubs Fan

I’m communing with my tribe of fellow scribblers, the James River Writers, at our annual shindig in Richmond today, so I’m republishing a blog post that proved quite popular last year,  just in time for the National League pennant race. Go Cubs! However, I would be remiss—to myself and KayKay—if I failed to mention that […]

Remembering Pooh

Yesterday was our local literary shindig, the annual Williamsburg Book Festival. This is held in conjunction with a much bigger cultural shindig called An Occasion for the Arts, which has become something of a juggernaut. Or at least a relative juggernaut, given that this is a smallish kind of place. (And thank you John D. […]

‘Member Berries?

We don’t have cable TV in our house. We keep up with whatever we care about—which excludes anything with commercials—by streaming off my MacBook. Kay-Kay isn’t convinced we’re actually saving money, after you add up the fees for internet service, Amazon Prime, Netflix, HBO Now, Hulu/Showtime (for Ray Donovan, because of my enduring man-crush on […]

Taking the Jamestown Ferry

I live exactly 2.2 miles from the north dock of the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry. I didn’t know until yesterday that a 13-year-old Tanya Tucker, on the same album with her breakout hit “Delta Dawn,” recorded a song called “Jamestown Ferry.” How could this have happened? I mean, Kay-Kay and I love the ferry. How could we […]

Our Great National Shame

In keeping with the trendy notion of Safe Spaces, this blog is a Politics-Free Zone. I want it to be place where both the blogger (me) and the scantily few number of readers (you) can exhale and think about things that don’t include, well, You Know Who. If you want my political primal screaming, I […]

Irma & Me

This was supposed to be a repeat blog post this week, drawn from my Extensive Greatest Hits, the reason being Kay-Kay and I were supposed to be cooking our tucheses on a beach in Costa Rica. This trip, I should note, was scheduled months ago. And routed us through… Miami. Yep, we got to join the […]