Michael Niemann: Recent Episodes
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It’s been almost a year since I last worked on a novel. That’s quite a long time for me. For most of the past eight years, I’ve always had a novel in the works. Since finishing the manuscript for Calamity Lake in December 2021, I’ve waited to hear back from agents. In the meantime I … Continue reading "On Starting a New Novel"
In his book Four Thousand Weeks Oliver Burkeman points out how ridiculously short our average life span is. He explains how pretty much every method to manage that amount of time is bound to fail. The reason? Our lives are limited and the amount of stuff that needs to be done isn’t. Time management is … Continue reading "On Time and Writing"
Where do you get your ideas? That’s a perennial question, authors of crime fiction face. And the answer is different for every one of us. So let me tell you how I get my ideas. The path is a little circuitous, but bear with me. For the past thirty-odd years before I retired from academia, … Continue reading "The World as Inspiration"
It’s with a little bit of bitter sweetness that I post this episode of Literary Ashland Radio. The December 2020 show was our last show. Ed and I started Literary Ashland Radio in July 2014 as the audio spin-off to his long-running blog Literary Ashland. In the six-and-a-half years since, we’ve interviewed a host of … Continue reading "Literary Ashland with Bobby Arellano"
Our November guest was Dr. Michael A. Rousell. He is a licensed psychologist and emeritus faculty member at Southern Oregon University. Rousell has a PhD in counseling from the University of Oregon and his teaching experience spans university graduate school to elementary education, and every level in between. His counseling background includes experience in sexual … Continue reading "Literary Ashland with Dr. Michael Rousell"
Joe Peterson is a retired educator who has lived in Ashland, Oregon, for twenty-three years. He has taught history, political science and education courses at Southern Oregon University and has managed Teaching American History federal grants for Southern Oregon Education Service District. He has presented lectures for the Southern Oregon Historical Society’s “Windows in Time” … Continue reading "Literary Ashland with Joe Peterson"
Our July 2020 guest was Jennifer Sherman Roberts, a writer, a writing teacher and the former president of the Josephine County Public Library Board. She holds a PhD in Early Modern Literature, from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities as well as degrees from Villanova University and the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently … Continue reading "Literary Ashland with Jennifer Sherman Roberts"
Our June 2020 guest on Literary Ashland was poet Zeke Hudson. Zeke started his academic career as an electrical engineer, but graduated from SOU in 2011 with a degree in creative writing and completed an MFA in poetry at Boise State University. He divides his time, unevenly, between technical writing for CU2.0 where he develops … Continue reading "Literary Ashland with Zeke Hudson"
Our May 2020 guest was Amber McGee. Amber is a Creative Writing major and English minor at Southern Oregon University and winner of this year Outstanding English Minor award. She is a club officer for the Multi-Racial Student Union, Queer Student Union, and Creative Writing Club. Her previous writing experience includes being book columnist and … Continue reading "Literary Ashland with Amber McGee"
Say you just made a cool million dollars. Except, it wasn’t by legal means. Also say you’re the careful sort. You know that buying a big car, or blowing it on $1,000 bottles of Crystal is going to attract attention of the sort you can’t afford. How can you enjoy your ill-gotten gains without running … Continue reading "Money Laundering 101"
The scene is a trope in many spy novels and movies. The undercover agent moves through a foreign city, she is nervous. She looks at each passerby, is that man an opposing agent? Is the old woman by the vegetable stand really selling potatoes or is she a watcher? That man with the newspaper, is … Continue reading "Everybody Is A Spy Now"