Jeffrey K. Walker's Blog, page 23

Legal Fictions

Before I took up an honest living—fiction writer—I worked as a lawyer. I’ve been several flavors of lawyer: criminal prosecutor, government attorney, company counsel, rule of law expert in some exotic places, and an assistant dean at a NYC law school. (I still do a little law on the side, the profession of “fiction writer” […]

Tiny You-Are-(L)

I heard yesterday that my novel “None of Us the Same” was awarded a Discovering Diamonds review. This is kind of a big deal in historical fiction, so I was feeling rather puffed up. Then I remembered how I felt on Monday, watching the solar eclipse in Charleston. Tiny. Really, really tiny. And that’s a […]

Pagans in Charleston

  Just a short post this week—with pictures! KayKay figured out how to put images into Word Press. Me, not so much. We’re on the road in Charleston, South Carolina, for The Big Cosmic Event. The tail end of the arc of totality for the solar eclipse passes through Charleston and everybody here is Very […]

Flying in the BUFF

Given the Really Scary Things said by Two Bad-Haired Leaders of Countries with Nuclear Weapons over the past week, I thought it an ideal time to own up to a rather sordid part of my checkered past. For three years of my wasted youth, I was a small cog in the big machine that was […]

Dogs and Cats, Living Together

I’m about to undertake the most dangerous thing I’ve ever attempted on the WorldWide InterWeb of Things and Stuff. This blog post is on why I like dogs more than cats. And let me admit upfront I adore dogs. And I like cats, well, not at all. Let me explain why. Yes, yes, there are […]

Kill Da Wabbit

I’m not somebody who goes in much for collecting stuff. Don’t know why. I was only a half-hearted baseball card collector as a kid and I once made some very ill-advised trades to get a full set of the ’69 Cubs starting lineup. I suppose I kinda collect books, but KayKay periodically makes me purge […]

Why Did I Say I Was Going to Shanghai?

I had a gig for five years—just ended last summer—as the international programs dean at an East Coast law school. It meant I got to spend five weeks every summer in Rome or Paris. Not too hard to take. But it also meant I was flying 13 hours in coach to and from China several […]

The Birth of the F-Bomb

There’s an irresistible impulse amongst we humans always to overestimate the uniqueness of our own situation. In the USA, for example, we’re currently hyperventilating over the hideous partisanship and coarseness of our political discourse. I call bollocks.

Moose On Ice, Puffin Chaser

Why didn’t someone tell me about Republic of Doyle sooner? It’s been on TV since 2010 for crying out loud. Well, it’s been on Canadian TV since 2010, which to most Americans is like saying it’s been on Martian TV. But now it’s on Netflix—the Binge-a-Lot Streaming Service—so I’m on it. The show is set […]

Boredom on the Orient Express

Let me start by coming clean. I really like trains. First, because train travel is not air travel. Which is increasingly miserable for those of us who can’t afford First Class, don’t have a company expense account to pay for Business Class, and/or aren’t a free-upgradeable Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, Copper, Sodium, or Molybdenum status […]