Ted Flanagan

Coming this Fall! Add this to the new Elmore Leonard bio due out next month and I think you’ve got a pretty spectacular one-two combination of literary biographies over the next 3 months or so!

“Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.” ~ Finley Peter Dunne

My first newspaper editor taught me that back on Day One — I think about it every damn day.

If you use the EMS system in America just know that big Medicaid/Medicare cuts will close hundreds of EMS agencies nationwide — agencies already hanging by the most tenuous of threads.

Radical Noir: 26 Activist Crime Novels Some subject matters and historical settings naturally lend themselves to radical politics. Crime fiction has often had a sympathy and respect for the down-and-out and oppressed. If noir is the mom…

Seems like a good time to revisit this...

crimereads.com/activist-noi...

Why It’s So Hard To Find Small Press Books And what you can do about it.

Why It’s So Hard To Find Small Press Books
www.persuasion.community/p/why-its-so...

McGuane never misses!

William Gaddis, The Art of Fiction No. 101 “In the past I've resisted [interviews] . . . because of the threat of questions from someone unfamiliar with the work itself—‘Do you work on a fixed schedule every day?’ ‘On which side of the paper d...

www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2...

Thrilled to tell you I've just published a new episode of The Speakeasy podcast today. In this one, my guest co-host
Stephen J. Golds & I have a great chat with our guest
@tedflanagan.bsky.social about his debut novel, and much more. Links ⤵️⤵️ 🧵1/2

President Zelenskyy has been one of the greatest leaders of our time, guiding Ukraine through the darkest period of its recent history, rising up to Russia’s unwarranted aggression, being an inspiration to the Ukrainian people and ensuring that Ukraine’s voice is heard on the world stage.

REM knew…

Gotcha — and welcome!! So far, so good over here!

I’m so sorry to hear this — I remember when my son was neutropenic like that from chemo and it was a frightening time. I hope you’re able to stay close and I wish your husband all the best!

Kash Patel Is Unsuited to Be FBI Director And he certainly doesn’t pass my own tests from when I was considered for the job.

This is a superb and impressively self-reflective demonstration of why Kash Patel is as wrong a candidate as anyone could possibly imagine for the sensitive position of FBI Director. Utterly missing: The humility to laugh at oneself. Bazinga!

www.thebulwark.com/p/kash-patel...

Without a doubt — women are dying. Women who didn’t need to. Women who could have been saved by a simple procedure. There is blood on the hands of all republicans. As the father of a young woman, I am afraid of my countrymen and what they’re willing to sacrifice in the name of hypocrisy and avarice.

I won’t have you disparage Grimace, sir. Hamburglar, though? I never liked that guy.

I just use it as a place to work out random writing/literature thoughts that have no other real outlet. I think William Kennedy used to call that sort of thing “thinking with my fingertips” aka at the keyboard.

I love that you seem to capture something new and intriguing about this building every time. It’s how I feel looking at the Tobin Bridge in Boston — there’s always some new way to see it.

Random tidbit from my reading this morning:

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”
~ Carl Jung

Two great people talking books and writing? Hell yes!

12 novels that NPR critics and staff were excited to share with you in 2024 Every year, we ask NPR staff and book critics to share their favorite titles in our annual Books We Love guide. Behind the scenes, it's fun to spot trends and see what gets nominated again and again.

Every year, we ask NPR staff and book critics to share their favorite titles in our annual Books We Love guide. Behind the scenes, it's fun to spot trends and see what gets nominated again and again.

And we must write with a pen—in Mark Twain’s phrase—warmed up in hell. We might have something then, worthy, necessary; a real literature instead of the Botox escapist lit told in the shiny prolix comedic style that has come to define us.” ~ Joy Williams

“We are American writers, absorbing the American experience. We must absorb its heat, the recklessness and ruthlessness, the grotesqueries and cruelties. We must reflect the sprawl and smallness of America, its greedy optimism and dangerous sentimentality.

Punk Noir Press The Only Crime Is Getting Caught

I have new holiday-themed micro-fiction, "Epiphany," up on PUNK NOIR!

punknoirmagazine.wordpress.com/punk-noir-ma...

The. BEST.

Even when you don’t have a horse in the race. Doesn’t matter. Always a great watch!

Behold, the magisterial splendor of the Flanagan Family Christmas Tree circa 2024

“Little full. Lots of sap.”

I taught this in my English Comp classes this semester and it rocked.

“You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.” ~ Nelson Algren

Journalists flock to Bluesky as X becomes increasingly 'toxic' Journalists are finding more readers and less hate on Bluesky than on the platform they used to know as Twitter.

I talked to journalists and writers who have found a larger and more engaged audience for their work on Bluesky, without having to see “AI bots and Nazis” at the top of their replies.
www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-...

I had a patient the other night on the ambulance who was life-threateningly sick with a condition for which she likely couldn’t get timely treatment in Texas. That this is reality in 2024 genuinely sickens me.