‘Another Green World’ is 50 years old today. Happy birthday! 🎂

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Ted Cruz all endorsed Andrew Cuomo. I'd vote for a moldy piece of Gruyère if those guys were against it.

Huh. Turns out people *want* affordable housing, livable wages, access to healthcare, and a stable government focused on the wellbeing of citizens. People *don’t want* masked secret troops in the streets, tax cuts for billionaires, a plunging economy, or corruption as policy. Who knew?

I have a tie rack full of ties hanging in my closet even though I swore on eight of my cat’s lives that I’d never wear a tie again. Where are my convictions? How can anyone trust a man who can’t even trust his own neckwear choices?

Zohran Mamdani caught lying that he understood Plato’s allegory of the cave, yet when asked to explain it, he seemed to instead explain Baudrillard’s theory of Simulacra and Simulation where reality has been replaced by symbols and signs, which seems similar to Plato’s theory but is not the same

Today's adventure: Into Manhattan to see the play 'Art' with Bobby Cannavale, James Cordon, and Neil Patrick Harris. It's the first Broadway revival of the Tony-winning comedy by Yasmina Reza, about three longtime friends and a ridiculously expensive painting.

It's incredible that Dementia Don still thinks he took an IQ test, and no one around him is willing to tell him the truth so he stops embarrassing himself.

TIL about Ohio Valley Style pizza and all I can say is are you kidding me?

I just came face to face with a good-sized bear 🐻 about 10' away from me. I was at the end of the driveway and the bear was on the neighbor’s lawn, looking at me. We were both a little surprised 😳 I think. Another neighbor caught it on video ⬇️ a few minutes later roaming around her house.

Another disappointing trend. Empathy is a fundamental virtue in Christianity, and you'd think Christians would be leaders in the fight against intolerance and rising fascism. But, astonishingly, many conservative Christians are now framing empathy as a sin. 🧵 1/3

Hey, guess what everyone! I've completely forgotten my multiplication tables. 8x7? No freaking idea. Eleventeen, I think.

Werewolf movies are about hidden beasts that could lurk inside anyone; at their heart they are mystery thrillers. Here are some werewolf movies you probably haven't seen but should. communicatoring.substack.com/p/werewolf-m...

“I never understood the idea that you're supposed to mellow as you get older. Slowing down isn't something I relate to at all. The goal is to continue in good and bad, all of it.” - Diane Keaton

I love black bean soup, and I love the version I make at home best of all.

Insane indeed.

One of my great pleasures is when Aimee Mann slides into waltz time and unfurls those twisty lyrics and a phrase gets turned and I think *damn* that’s good.

ONLY A FEW SPOTS LEFT! Reminder for my North Jersey writer friends: Saturday, 4 October, I'm presenting a workshop "Personal Brand Strategy for Writers." Wayne Public Library, 461 Valley Road in Wayne NJ, at 2:30 pm. Free, but registration is required: waynepubliclibrary.libcal.com/event/14512393

Under-appreciated films: ‘Constantine’ (2005). Come for Keanu Reeves, leave gobsmacked by the creative approaches of Tilda Swinton and Peter Stormare.

I can’t believe I sat on ‘Severance’ but finally binge watched it on the plane home from Europe and man that series is terrific

I love a good fourth wall breaking and not sure if anyone did it better than Phoebe Waller-Bridge in ‘Fleabag’

To all those crying that they didn’t get raptured this week: we get it, we’re unhappy you’re still here, too.

"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment." - Charlie Kirk, April 2023, at a Turning Point USA event.

enshittification | noun | when a digital platform is made worse for users, in order to increase profits

Jodie Comer is finally getting that musical! And an audacious one at that. deadline.com/2025/09/jodi...

Was thinking the other day about AI and the creative process and I remembered an episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. Titled "The Retroville 9" it aired in late 2003, and in it Jimmy techs up the equipment so his baseball team wins. 1/4

My CNF memoir piece about the life and death of a childhood friend, "Thin Ice", is in the Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, issue #23, sblaam.com. Click on the cover image to access the PDF flipbook; my story starts on page 84. Everything here is true, although names have been changed.

Excellent question.

“Is a dream autobiography or fiction?” - Lynda Barry, ‘What It Is’

Public relations PSA: "A pitch is the 'why,' and the press release is the 'what.' Pitches tell someone why they should interview you or cover your book. Press releases are copy about the book." - Kathleen Schmidt substack.com/home/post/p-...

Assoc of American Publishers: Total sales rose 4.1%, to $32.5B, while unit sales increased 3.4%, to $3.1B... Online sales rose 11% to nearly $11B. E-tailers accounted for 52% of trade sales. People are buying books, contrary to what many assume! www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

I'm presenting a free Writer's Workshop on creating a Personal Brand Strategy for Writers at the Wayne Public Library in Wayne NJ, Saturday, 4 October 2025, at 2:30 pm. Space is limited and registration is required. 1/4 To register visit: waynepubliclibrary.libcal.com/event/14512393

My suspense thriller 'Nina’s Friends' is set in multiple locations. No choice was arbitrary. Here are notes about the locations and why the story takes place there, listed roughly in order of appearance in the book. (Spoiler alert, obviously) communicatoring.substack.com/p/why-is-the...

Watching ‘Weapons’ first thing in the morning. I haven’t done this in *decades* but when I lived in NYC and San Francisco I would often go to early matinees. It’s a different vibe and feels like it’s a private screening (though I’m not the only one here).

As I see nitwits touting $29.6B in tariff “revenue” in July I need to point out for the millionth time the tariffs are paid by US companies and consumers; it is a TAX paid by YOU and ME. What’s so hard to understand about this??

The elderly & cognitively struggling US president, who is BTW an adjudicated rapist, a braggart on vulva-grabbing, and a close comrade of Jeffrey Epstein, publicly commenting on which young women are, in his opinion, hot, is totally, completely normal and not inappropriate or creepy at all.

“I think mystery allows us time to dream.” - Robert Wilson (1941-2025)

Cover reveal for 'Lucky Guy', a suspense novel where Joseph Conrad's novella 'The Duel' meets Patricia Highsmith's 'The Talented Mr. Ripley'. It features a neurodivergent antihero and a lot of questionable behavior all around. Expect it in Q4 2025. Info at jrirwin.com/books/lucky-...

"Of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about" - Fitzgerald on The Great Gatsby from a 1925 letter to a friend

“Never in a million years did I think I’d end up making a career out of singing. I didn’t think it was possible. As far as I knew, the only way I could make any dough was to go and work in a factory, like everyone else in Aston. Or rob a f**king bank.” ― Ozzy Osbourne, 'I Am Ozzy'

We now live in a country where the speaker of the house is blatantly protecting a pedophile in the White House from being exposed.

Here are some of the films that were on my mind during the writing of the novel Nina's Friends, and why. communicatoring.substack.com/p/thriller-c...

28 Years Later: Come for the apocalyptic horror, stay for the heartbreaking (yet oddly inspiring, in this context) relationship between Jodie Comer and Alfie Williams as her son. Also: everyone in the cast is good, but the moments between Comer and Ralph Fiennes in the Bone Temple are sublime.

Reprint of my short story "Timothy the Artist" which originally appeared in the Bay to Ocean Journal 2024, published by the Eastern Shore Writers Assoc. communicatoring.substack.com/p/timothy-th...

'Lucky Guy' is a contemporary psychological thriller with a shocking beginning, a lot of shenanigans in the middle, and a shocking ending. Coming in November 2025. More info at jrirwin.com/books/lucky-...

Doing line editing on the novel and I love the obssessive discipline of it. What I don’t understand is what idiot cluttered the prose with all these useless adverbs and adjectives??

“I think in terms of emotions. And feelings. So sometimes what I say may not always be clear. But creatively, there's a lot to be said for that way of thinking.” - Brian Wilson

Watching the break-up spat between two closeted emotionally and intellectually immature preening nitwits would be funny if it was on Bravo, perhaps, but unfortunately it's the US government.

Loved The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Simultaneously fascinating, tragic, gruesome, and life-affirming. Part revenge story, part Interview with the Vampire, part elegiac history of the Piegan Blackfeet peoples. 1/4 www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Bu...

This. 1000x this.