Frankenstein Day: The Monster Was Never the Villain
TL;DR: Frankenstein Day is August 30, Mary Shelley’s birthday. She wrote Frankenstein at 18 and published it in 1818, and it is often called the first real science fiction novel. The deepest thing about it is that the monster is not the villain. The creature is a made being, abandoned by its creator, and that […]
Star Wars Day: I Was There Opening Day in 1977
TL;DR: Star Wars Day is May 4, built on the pun “May the Fourth be with you.” The original film opened in 1977 and changed movies forever. I was there on opening day, standing in a line that wrapped around the theater twice. Here is the story of that day, why Star Wars owes a […]
Towel Day: Don’t Panic and Always Know Where Your Towel Is
TL;DR: Every May 25, fans of Douglas Adams carry a towel in public to honor the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The first Towel Day happened in 2001, two weeks after Adams died at 49. The towel comes from the books, where it is called the most useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker […]
Sherlock Holmes’ Birthday: The Case for Real Detection
TL;DR: Sherlockians celebrate January 6 as Sherlock Holmes’ birthday, even though Arthur Conan Doyle never gave a date. Holmes appeared in 4 novels and 56 short stories and became the most famous detective in history on one idea: a man who solves crimes through pure observation and logic. The screen keeps getting him wrong by […]
Ulysses 1954: The Day Homer Hit the Big Screen
TL;DR: On October 6, 1954, the film Ulysses premiered, putting Kirk Douglas on screen as Homer’s wandering hero and bringing the Odyssey to a mass movie audience. The Odyssey is one of the oldest stories we have, roughly three thousand years old, and it still works because the bones are perfect. Here is the story […]
Dunesday: Dune Part Three and Ranking Every Adaptation
TL;DR: December 18, 2026 is Dunesday, the release date of Dune: Part Three. The film adapts Dune Messiah, closes out Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy, and opens the same day as Avengers: Doomsday, which is where the nickname came from. Here is what we know about the film, why adapting Dune is so hard, and my honest […]
World Photography Day: 980,000 Pictures and Counting
TL;DR: World Photography Day is August 19, the date in 1839 that France gave the daguerreotype to the world. Photography started as a chemistry experiment for scientists and became something everyone could do. I know that pull personally. A cheap film camera turned into a 980,000-photo obsession that took me from backyard flowers to the […]
Frank Herbert’s Birthday: Dune Day for Worldbuilders
TL;DR: Frank Herbert was born on October 8, 1920, and Dune fans mark the date as an unofficial Dune Day. Dune was rejected by more than twenty publishers, finally printed by an auto-repair-manual company in 1965, sold slowly, then won the first Nebula Award and tied for the Hugo. It has since sold around twenty […]
National Camera Day: The Machine That Changed How I See
TL;DR: National Camera Day is June 29, and it honors the camera itself, the machine, not just the art of photography. The camera went from a 50-pound box of plates and chemicals to the device in your pocket. I have owned a long line of them, each one bigger than the last, and they carried […]
National Comic Book Day: Iron Man, FOOM, and the Seeds I Never Sold
TL;DR: National Comic Book Day is September 25, a celebration of the medium that taught a lot of us to love stories. I had Iron Man and Spider-Man from the early issues, lost them all, and once trashed boxes of them when a shop offered a nickel each. I loved the characters and quit when […]
National Reading Month: The Books I Have Read Forty Times
TL;DR: National Reading Month is March, kicked off on the 2nd by Dr. Seuss’s birthday and Read Across America Day. It is a month to celebrate reading for its own sake. So here is an honest confession from a writer who reads constantly. The books I love most are not the literary classics. They are […]
Edgar Allan Poe’s Birthday: I Hated the Poems and Loved the Movie
TL;DR: Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809. He invented the modern detective story, helped build modern horror, and wrote poems every American kid gets assigned in school. I am living proof that school can ruin a writer for you. I hated Poe on the page as a kid. Then a campy 1963 horror […]
Charles Dickens Day: I Hated the Book and Watch Every Adaptation
TL;DR: Charles Dickens was born February 7, 1812, and gave us A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and the word “Dickensian.” I was forced to read A Christmas Carol in grade school and thought it was mediocre. Now, decades later, I find the story fascinating and will watch any adaptation ever made. Here is […]
Shakespeare Day: He Only Worked for Me Live
TL;DR: Shakespeare Day is April 23, the traditional date of both his birth and his death. He wrote about 38 plays and 154 sonnets and shaped the English language more than anyone. I never liked him as a kid. On the page, recorded, even in comic form, he did nothing for me. Then I saw […]
Ray Bradbury Day: The Illustrated Man Got Me for Life
TL;DR: Ray Bradbury was born August 22, 1920. He wrote Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and The Illustrated Man, and he is one of my old favorites. The Illustrated Man got me hooked for life. The movie version did not come close. Bradbury was one of the great golden age writers, alongside Asimov, and he […]
Agatha Christie Day: The Queen of Crime and the Mysteries I’m About to Write
TL;DR: Agatha Christie was born September 15, 1890, and became the best-selling novelist in history, behind only the Bible and Shakespeare. She created Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and wrote Murder on the Orient Express. Science fiction was always my first love, but I read Christie too, subscribed to a monthly mystery magazine, and enjoyed […]
National Punctuation Day: Learn the Rules Before AI Forgets Them For You
TL;DR: National Punctuation Day is September 24, founded in 2004 by Jeff Rubin to fight sloppy punctuation. I did not know it existed until now, but I am all in, because punctuation is having a strange moment. AI is quietly funneling everyone toward the same mediocre writing, and it has even made the em dash […]
National Proofreading Day: Proofreading Is More Than Grammar
TL;DR: National Proofreading Day is March 8, created in 2011 to promote error-free writing. But real proofreading is bigger than catching typos. The dangerous errors are not spelling mistakes. They are paragraphs in the wrong order, scenes that say the wrong thing, and characters who change eye color halfway through the book. Here is the […]
World Storytelling Day: Story Is Your Life, Not Just Your Writing
TL;DR: World Storytelling Day is March 20, the spring equinox, and it celebrates oral storytelling, the spoken kind, not just the written kind. That distinction matters to me. I tell stories constantly, I have written over forty of them plus flash fiction and books, and I have learned that storytelling is bigger than writing. Story […]
National Library Week: Where Readers and Writers Are Made
TL;DR: National Library Week is the third full week of April, an American Library Association event running since 1958. It celebrates libraries and the people who run them. I have a soft spot for it, because the library is where I became a reader. The first adult book I ever read came from one, and […]