Matthew Arnold Stern's Blog, page 31
May 22, 2019
My do-over graduation speech
What if you could go back to your high school and give a graduation speech? It has been 40 years since I graduated from what is now called Reseda Charter High School. Here is what I would say to the Class of 2019 at Reseda and all other high schools. To the Reseda Charter High […]
May 19, 2019
The Pre-Something Era
My novel Amiga will be published by Black Rose Writing on November 27, 2019. I will describe my publishing journey in a series of posts. This is the third of this series. When I started writing Amiga in 2016, the presidential election was an event happening in the present. With everything that has happened in the […]
May 9, 2019
Change often comes uninvited
You will notice that my website has a new look. I’d like to tell you that it was the result of market research to create the best format for my upcoming Amiga release, and it was rolled out after months of careful planning. Actually, I changed the format in about an hour because an updated WordPress […]
April 29, 2019
The day Commodore died
My novel Amiga will be published by Black Rose Writing on November 27, 2019. I will describe my publishing journey in a series of posts. This is the second of this series. This week marks a sad anniversary. On April 29, 1994, Commodore filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors. For Commodore employees and those …
April 23, 2019
Debugging a manuscript
My novel Amiga will be published by Black Rose Writing on November 27, 2019. I will describe my publishing journey in a series of posts. This is the first of this series. My computer industry experience provides more than the subject and inspiration for my novel Amiga. It influences how I tackle one of the …
April 8, 2019
A little good news
Traditionally, black roses are symbols of mystery, danger, and drama. Today, the black rose is part of some wonderful news I’d like to share with you. First, you will soon see me on YouTube as part of Matt Whiteside’s UniWeb Productions interview program. We will be recording next Tuesday, April 16. I will post the …
March 29, 2019
Learn to laugh at yourself
I haven’t done in a “forty years ago” post for a while, so here’s one: On this date in 1979, we published our April Fool’s edition of our school paper, the Regent Review. We called it the Reject Review, and we had all sorts of fun making silly articles and cartoons. They were all cleared by our …
March 25, 2019
Comedy isn’t easy
This post came from a couple of questions. The first was a tweet where someone asked why writers feel that they must always be serious. The second was a question from my wife who asked me, “Why did you find John Belushi so funny?” The answers to both come from the same issue, comedy is hard …
March 16, 2019
Speaking to 2,000 people
What is the largest crowd you’ve ever spoken to? The largest audience I’ve ever spoken to in person was around 500 at a Little League opening day. Whenever I speak to a group of any size, I like to pick someone out in the audience and talk to them for a few seconds. Then I go …
March 10, 2019
20 things I regret
We like to live without regret. We want to avoid doing stupid things, and we like to think the stupid things we did helped us grow and become better people. I know that if I went back and changed one bad decision or avoided one unfortunate situation, and I might not have the life I …
