Dave's Fiction Warehouse

In which I bloviate about books, TV, movies, politics and other stuff.

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Bad business

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Ever boycott a business because social media told you to? I’m referring to that 9-year-old pic (see above) of the over-fed Jimmy John’s guy sitting on the knee of an elephant he has just killed. The photo periodically makes the rounds on Facebook and Twitter. Outrage ensues. Yes, it is a disturbing image: A chunky American billionaire (wealth estimate from Forbes) demonstrating unseemly joy in the death […]

This crime
can’t be solved

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  I n another life, I would like to have been a detective. Not a regular detective who has to play by the rules and follow “the law” and kiss all the asses of all the powers-that-be. No, thank you! I’m thinking of something more like a movie detective, the kind of guy whose boss gives him 48 hours to solve a sordid high-profile murder case and […]

Weather-beaten banner

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When we first moved to this old neighborhood in Northeast Florida, I decided to hang an American flag out front. Not for patriotic reasons, really; it’s just that the previous owners had one, and this is a historic area where Old Glory on the front porch kind of fits the vibe. Florida’s heat and rain and humidity are hard on flags. I replaced mine for the first […]

Season of the witch

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Too soon for Halloween? No way! Not when Costco and Walmart are already jam-packed with Christmas crap on October 1. I wanted to mention a podcast I’ve been enjoying in the run-up to All Hallow’s Eve: “Spooked.” Every Thursday, the podcast features regular people talking about eerie stuff that has happened to them. You know, spectral visitors and phantom hitchhikers and an assortment of unexplained phenomena. Some […]

A good time for fiction

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I know; it’s been awhile. The Trump nightmare keeps getting darker, and writing about anything else has seemed frivolous. But life goes on. I am just determined to outlive this bastard, to dance rhetorically on his grave when all this passes, as it must. So I’ve deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone again, and I’ve resumed writing fiction. Rewriting it, too. Recently I decided to repackage […]

Bonfire of my vanity

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Take a look at the composite picture above: What do the five faces have in common? I’ll just wait here while you ponder. Hint: It’s not the Dave Clark Five. It’s not the Five Amigos. It’s not the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It’s not the Five Guys. It’s not the Five Pillars of Islam. No, my friends, these five faces represent the closest resemblance to yours […]

It could be worse.
Just ask Grant

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If you’ve ever thought America is going to hell in a handbasket — and who among us hasn’t? — take a trip back to the mid-19th century and see how you like it then. That’s what I’ve been doing since the first of the year: Reading Ron Chernow’s 960-page biography of Ulysses S. Grant. I’ve learned a lot from “Grant,” but mostly this: Crises and cataclysms come […]