Out with the Old, In with the New

A New Year demands new writing projects and a new workspace. And since I’m a writer who is deeply inspired or discouraged by his environment, I need a workspace that has a lot of inspirational quotes, pictures and objects around me when I work.

Look closely and you can find all of my talismans and inspirational knicknacks, including

• Cookie Monster!
• Screenshots from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Natural.
• A painting of a summer scene by amazing artist and high school friend Kristine Zanno Kratky (based on my short story “Summer on the Cape”).
• My Muse, Alexas.
• Chestnuts that I smuggled into the U.S. from France (I got them in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris).
• Shell casings from my friend Bob Hanaburgh’s Sig Sauer .45 ACP.
• A snowy cabin in the Rockies.
• Two pictures of Ernest Hemingway.
• Pictures of my two grandfathers.
• A stunning redhead who was the inspiration for Shay Connolly in my Dakota mystery, A Real Piece of Work.
• Thomas Cole’s painting The Oxbow.
• Manuscripts from my next three projects.
• The Great Gatsby, A Moveable Feast, and The Stories of John Cheever.
• A picture of Mount Everest.
• A granite stone from a quarry that my grandfather and great-grandfather cut stone in.
• My Mont Blanc pen.
• Stones from Little Round Top at Gettysburg, Appomattox, Maine, and Castlecraig (one of my ancestors’ castles in Scotland).