What’s New at The Writing King: Week of August 30, 2026

Sep 3 · Artificial Intelligence, Critical Thinking

The Web Got Fenced: What AI Search Costs Small Sites

This week, how AI search quietly replaced merit with corroboration, and what that closure costs the small websites the open web was built for.

Sep 3 · Artificial Intelligence, Critical Thinking

What the AI Visibility Industry Sells, and What the Evidence Says

This week, the AI visibility tactics that do not work, the ones that will get you penalized, and the short list that survives scrutiny.

Sep 3 · Critical Thinking, Society

Black Tuesday: The Web Ring War Nobody Outside It Noticed

This week, the web ring war of 2000, told from inside it, and the lesson that beating the villain does not save the thing.

Sep 3 · Critical Thinking, Society

Black Tuesday: The Original ring-master.net Page, 2000

In 2000, Yahoo killed WebRing by forcing a clunky navigation system on ringmasters who'd built thriving communities. This archived piece captures their fury in real time.

Sep 2 · Ghostwriting, Leadership

Hiring a Ghostwriter for a Retired General’s or Admiral’s Leadership Book

This week, Richard looks at how retired generals and admirals write leadership books with a ghostwriter, and why Tampa has a special claim on that shelf.

Sep 2 · Behind the Book, Fiction

Behind the Book: Peacekeeper, The Dissolution Wars

This week, the two orders that ran side by side without meeting, why light speed makes a war unwinnable, and the institution that made self-sufficiency a violation.

Sep 2 · Behind the Book, Publishing

Behind the Book: Publish Your Book

This week, clicking Publish and watching nothing happen, why each platform has its own personality, and the guide built so you can skip most of it.

Sep 2 · Behind the Book, Personal Growth

Behind the Book: Real World Survival

This week, the answer that started a survival book, what two hurricanes broke in my own playbook, and why recent disasters produce false confidence.

Sep 2 · Behind the Book, Fiction

Behind the Book: Reincarnation

This week, memories that do not belong to this life, the toothache in seventh century Basra, and why the book does not ask you to believe anything.

Sep 2 · Behind the Book, Publishing

Behind the Book: Sell Your Books

This week, publishing a book and waiting, the wall every author hits after typing the end, and going to where the readers already are.

Sep 2 · Behind the Book, Business

Behind the Book: Selling on eBay

This week, twenty-five thousand dollars from a decluttered house, the corporate marketplace that replaced the garage sale, and why the old playbook is now a liability.

Sep 2 · Behind the Book, Writing

Behind the Book: Show Don’t Tell

This week, the writing advice I ignored for years, the objection nobody answered, and the chapter on what happens when showing goes wrong.

Sep 5 · Business, Personal Growth

Jay Stifflemire: Nothing Ever Gets Written Down

Jay Stifflemire spent twenty years in the Navy running the software behind naval aviation maintenance, then founded JLS Publishers nine days after an unexpected last day at a contract job. He publishes in four lanes only and started with a memoir meant for his own children.

Sep 5 · Business, Personal Growth

Georgie-Ann Getton: I Forgot I Had Free Will

Georgie-Ann Getton runs GSD Solutions and holds a master's in organizational psychology. She argues that ninety nine percent of what you do is decided by how you think, that not making a choice is itself a choice, and that the real cost of AI is the curiosity people are giving up.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

Senior Citizens Day: Nobody Thinks Their Life Is Interesting

This week, why people are terrible judges of their own material, the interview question that opens large rooms, and the record that exists because one man wrote it down.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

Alien Abduction Day: Why Invented Holidays Live or Die

This week, tomato fights and crying-baby sumo, the three reasons invented holidays die, and why readers adopt ideas only when given something to do with them.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

Groundhog Day: When a Story Overwrote a Tradition

This week, the folk custom a single story overwrote, why a structure travels further than a subject, and the reason there is no shortcut to draft eleven.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

Presidents Day: The Name Nobody Made Official

This week, the holiday whose legal name nobody uses, the two men it was nearly about, and the compression that quietly kills a first draft.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

Washington’s Birthday: The Man Who Gave It Back Twice

This week, the general who went home to farm when every precedent said take the country, the norm one man invented by leaving, and why conduct under cost beats stated belief.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

Lincoln’s Birthday: The Hardest Job Anybody Has Held

This week, the memorandum Lincoln wrote when he expected to lose, the two-minute speech that outlived the two-hour one, and why brevity is the most expensive kind of writing.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

Talk Like a Pirate Day: Why the Joke Survived

This week, the joke that outlived thirty years, the difference between being allowed in and being a fixture, and how to tell a voice from a character.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

Bats Day: The Afternoon a Crowded Street Parted

This week, a community event with no corporate backing, the friend two attendants followed down a crowded street, and why a page that has decided what it is will part a crowd.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

Armistice Day: What a Renaming Costs

This week, the hour everybody knew was coming, what changed when a day was renamed for a category instead of an event, and where the material hides in a memoir.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

VE Day: The War That Was Still Running

This week, the celebration that was true and partial, the men for whom nothing changed that day, and why the record skews toward whatever was photogenic.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

VJ Day: The Record That Only Exists Because Somebody Wrote It Down

This week, the gap between the ceremony and the camp gate, the diaries that were never permitted, and why a written account outlasts a family story.

Aug 31 · Observances, Writing

Redneck Christmas: What Fans Call the Daytona 500

This week, the nickname you will not find on a press release, why a track president and a fanbase reached for the same metaphor, and what unofficial vocabulary tells a writer about a field.

Sep 1 · People, Personal Growth

Fail Where It’s Safe: Comfort Zones, Hyperfocus and Face Blindness | The Impossible Puzzles Show, Episode 198

On The Impossible Puzzles Show episode 198, Richard Lowe and host Mike Merkur traded notes on failing safely, getting out of comfort zones, and living with ADHD, from hyperfocus to face blindness.

Sep 5 · Fiction, Writing

Trophic Structure

This week, a piece of speculative fiction told entirely through invented documents, asking what you get when AI systems evolve without anything ever becoming conscious.

Sep 1

About Richard Lowe

The factual record on Richard Lowe: what he does, who he writes for, what he has published, and where the work can be independently verified.

Aug 30 · Personal Growth

Take the Ticket

This week, the eighteen year old who turned a first DUI into twenty years, a taser pointed at me outside Joshua Tree, and what an officer told me in a school zone that I have never forgotten.