Behind the Book: Stuck in the Middle
Four books ago I sat down to write about why Americans had stopped thinking. Each one dragged me somewhere I did not expect, and this is the book where all four of them meet.
Tag: Research (Page 7)
AmericaBehind the Book: The Emasculation of America
I did not set out to write this book. I set out to understand what I was watching on YouTube, and the view counts were too high for it to be fringe.
Character DevelopmentBehind the Book: The Ultimate Bug Out Bag Guide
The Northridge earthquake threw me out of bed at 4:31 in the morning. Then the shaking stopped, we realised our son was missing, and every piece of theoretical knowledge I had was worth nothing.
AmericaBehind the Book: The Villainization of America
My grandfather would talk about what happened to him. The problem was that nobody wanted to listen, because the story made people uncomfortable, and people get tired of being uncomfortable.
Character DevelopmentBehind the Book: Turn Off the TV, Get Off Your Ass, and Do Something
People say they are too busy to exercise, too tired to cook, too overwhelmed to read and too stressed to see friends. Then they watch four hours of Netflix. Something does not add up.
Character DevelopmentBehind the Book: Party Planning for Introverts
I hid in the bedroom at my own housewarming, certain I had ruined it, and a guest found me eating leftover cheese and told me everybody was having a wonderful time. He was not being kind. He was reporting.
Character DevelopmentBehind the Book: Don’t Live in Fear
I kept watching people I care about hit the same wall for years without trying the door. Then I looked at my own life and saw it there too. Thirty-three years, and I called it a career.
Character DevelopmentBehind the Book: Everybody’s Prejudiced
A book that asks readers to examine their own prejudices has to go first. So the introduction is mine: what my parents taught me, what I believed for thirty years without testing it, and the club I was recruited into…
Character DevelopmentBehind the Book: The Dead Don’t Need Stuff
My father died with a one-bedroom apartment filled floor to ceiling and two full storage units, while being broke. I was three thousand miles away, so I told the apartment manager to donate all of it. Nobody objected, and nobody…
ADHDBehind the Book: The ADHD Christian
I wrote this immediately after finding out I was ADHD, before the autobiography. It came out of a real church I attended and eventually stopped attending. I was baptized there and then simply stopped going, and I never told anybody…
Character DevelopmentBehind the Book: The Relationship BULLSHIT Men Fall For
I wrote this for specific friends who could not work out why relationships kept going wrong. The credential behind it is not on the sales page: eight years photographing performers meant thousands of hours of unguarded conversation with women backstage,…
Character DevelopmentBehind the Book: God Is Everything
I held this idea for decades before writing it down, and what I was fighting was not doubt. It was the social conditioning that tells you which beliefs are permitted. I was raised Church of Christ and I still am…