A brief update on writing my fifth book, Barons, Brewers, and Bootleggers: A Social History of Beer in Missouri.
Continue reading “Writer’s Notebook: December 2024”Writer’s Notebook: December 2024
Ten Years Later on the KC Ale Trail
Reflections on writing and publishing KC Ale Trail a decade ago.
Continue reading “Ten Years Later on the KC Ale Trail”Gloves and Glory: The Life of Triple Crown Champion Henry Armstrong and the Mystery of Henry Armstrong Beer
A literary reading and Vine Street Brewing beer release event highlighting St. Louis boxer Henry Armstrong
Continue reading “Gloves and Glory: The Life of Triple Crown Champion Henry Armstrong and the Mystery of Henry Armstrong Beer”Now Available: The New Territory, Issue 16
Order the latest issue #16 of The New Territory or better yet, sign up for a subscription! This issue contains my Literary Landscapes essay about Miriam Davis Colt and the Vegetarian Settlement Company. The failed settlement of Octagon City once existed in Allen County, Kansas. Based on Colt’s travels and my own immigrant mother’s journey, I reflected on what we choose to carry and what to leave behind.
Continue reading “Now Available: The New Territory, Issue 16”Summer Book Research in the Ozarks and Springfield
Summer book research in the Ozarks and Springfield invested life into the long quiet hours of writing a book once I returned home. Don’t get me wrong. I love being a research nerd, poking my nose into city records, biographical accounts, and newspaper articles more than a century old. Diving into the past shifts my perspective when I consider the present. Then and now, I observe how human nature resurrects its best aspirations and worst impulses.
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