Welcome, 2017. And hello again, blog of mine. It’s me, Brian. I’ve had some pretty monumental lapses with the old “Sharper Thesis” blog, but a nearly six month silence is hard to justify. Sure I’ve been busy…who hasn’t? Sure I coached a football season from August to October, started a school year and worked hard […]
The Writing Life
Scrivener for iOS and the Dilemma of Too Many Places to Write
It’s here! Scrivener for iOS arrived earlier this month, and I’ve been out vacationing and reading and finishing up another successful year at the Cole SUmmer Writers Institute, so I missed it. But today I rectified that mistake, and I’m really glad I did. I don’t often do reviews here, but this is very cool […]
Number 6: Legitimizing the Whole Endeavor
Story number six was published earlier this month. “Pillow Talk.” One of my favorites. I’ve learned some lessons from the last story- some hard to take and most I’m not ready to talk about publicly- so this was such a pleasant surprise to see it come so quickly on its predecessor’s heels. The problems were […]
Writing After Auschwitz
From The New York Review of Books interview with Syrian poet Adonis on April 16, 2016. NYRB: But can poetry address the terrible, barbaric violence now engulfing Syria? One thinks of Adorno’s claim about poetry after Auschwitz. Adonis: This is talk. Auschwitz was a catastrophic disaster, but humanity has gone through many catastrophic disasters. On the contrary, […]
Old Friends Publishing Books
It was a pleasant surprise to learn earlier this year that my former department chair at Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons, Dr.Paul O’Brien, was publishing a memoir after retiring from his forty-seven year teaching career. Paul, pictured to the left at a book signing at ND-BG last night, was one of my earliest mentors, and a true […]
Story #5
Sometimes the good stuff in life is worth waiting for. Delayed gratification can bring about some of the sweetest rewards a person can experience. My fifth story, “What You Wish For,” was published yesterday in Black Denim Lit (http://www.bdlit.com/what-you-wish-for.html), an online literary zine. It’s listed as one of the four December stories the editors selected. […]