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If Life Has Felt a Little Too Weird Lately… You Might Need This Book
If you’ve been walking around feeling like the world stopped making sense a while ago — like you’re doing your best to stay afloat in a place that keeps changing the rules — then Hard Boiled Cabbage might be exactly the story you’ve been craving. It’s not just a hard-boiled mystery.It’s not just absurd humor.It’s…
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What a Cop-Turned-Author Taught Me About Not Being a Struggling Artist
I sat down with Rodney Carpentier (R.L. Carpenter to his readers) and picked his brain for an hour. He’s an 18-year law enforcement professional, a lieutenant counting down the days to retirement, and somehow, in the middle of all that, he’s written and published two crime novels with a third on the way. But the…
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From Hammer to Hollywood: What Max Shippee Taught Me About Story, Survival, and the Creative Life
Every once in a while, I sit down with someone whose creative journey feels like a mirror held up to my own—only with a few more plot twists, a couple more passport stamps, and significantly better hair. That was my conversation with actor-turned-author Max Shippee, a man who has lived in more states than I’ve…
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From Hammer to Human Connection: What I Learned Talking with Wes Towers
Today, I interview a man who works with people in both the world I came from (Construction) and the world I’m entering (Creative). Wes Towers, founder of Uplift 360 and author of The Simple Manifesto. On paper, he builds websites for construction companies. In reality, he’s spent twenty years learning the hard lessons most of…
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When Hollywood Hammers Back: What Richard Moon Taught Me About Surviving the Creative Life
I wanted all day, rather than just one hour to pick this man’s brain. Richard Moon is one of those people. If you don’t know Richard yet, you will. He’s an award-winning screenwriter, indie film producer, novelist, physics tutor, SF nerd, history obsessive, musician, hiker, curler, kitten foster, and all-around storyteller. His debut historical fantasy…
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Bend, Don’t Break: What I Learned from Talking with “Santa for Nerds” Paul Pape
Every once in a while, I meet someone whose story doesn’t just inspire me — it re-calibrates something in my brain. Not because they’ve lived some glamorous Hollywood life or because they’ve “made it” in the traditional sense, but because they’ve carved out a life that looks suspiciously like freedom. That was my conversation with…
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Second Chances, and Fixing Your Old Work
Every once in a while, you do something sneaky. Not illegal-sneaky, not “hide the body” sneaky — more like the creative version of quietly rearranging the living room and hoping nobody notices until they sit down and go, “Huh… this actually works better.” That’s basically what I just did with one of my old book.…
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Debt: Friend, Foe, or Just a Tool in Disguise?
We love to slap labels on things. Debt? Oh, that’s “bad.” Or wait, maybe it’s “good” if you’re building credit. Or “ugly” when it spirals out of control. But here’s the truth: debt isn’t a moral character in your latest novel. It doesn’t wake up in the morning plotting against you. In fact, and this…
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Fabric and Fun: What Kira Klinger Taught Me About Creativity, Grit, and Making Your Own Luck
Every once in a while, I sit down with someone who reminds me why I started this whole “hammer to Hollywood” journey in the first place. Someone who embodies the messy, beautiful, stubborn heart of creativity. Someone who proves that the path from struggling artist to working creative is rarely straight, never predictable, and always…
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Money Is A Battery
Here is a pretty simple analogy. If money is a battery, how does that change the way you look at it? Before we get too deep into this, lets consider for a moment that you want money, and a lot of it. I think that’s a reasonable assumption. Who doesn’t want more money. The question…
Light Minded Arts
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