I write article for Livestrong.com and, eHow.com and starting today, I’ll post some of what I put out there. Just for fun. To keep in touch. To tout my brand. To flog my skills. To keep it real. OK. Enough.

Can Drinkers Lose Weight? …

I’m not very enamored of most websites about diabetes. They seem too clinical or … what’s the word? Happy all the time about the condition. However, there is a site I am recommending called A Sweet Life. It’s run by a woman named Jessica Apple and it includes a lot of recipes and the normal things one would hope to find at such a site. It also has some articles and features about the emotional and quirky aspects of diabetes and living as a diabetic. I hope you’ll check it out.

I am a huge Steve Earle fan. His music is well written, intelligent, funny and touching. Now so is his prose. He is the author of I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive, a novel about Doc Ebersole, who was Hank Williams’ doctor. The book title, for those unfamiliar, is the same as a Hank song.

Here’s a talk in Publisher’s Weekly with the man about his book, his former habit, abortion, Michael Ondaatje, Buddy Bolden, and the big difference between a comma and a period.

The first review for Bad Day for the Home Team is posted on amazon.com. The reviewer, ReadersFavorite.com, gave the book five out of five stars and I’m most thrilled that the reviewer said, “You could not help liking Sam.” For me that’s the ultimate compliment because Sam is a man who killed forty people. I’m hopeful this review will help boost readership for this challenging but rewarding novel about a man who shoots a bunch of people in Arizona (hmmmm) and how society tries to figure out why he did it. (Again, hmmmmm.).

Review worth reading (as is nearly everything else written by) Dwight Garner: “…Now there, you think, in these two combined versions, is Bruce Chatwin: free spirit, sexy beast, possessor of a double life, serial prevaricator. Throughout his career he’d combat charges that he ginned things up, or shaded the truth, in his nonfiction — charges that his biographer Nicholas Shakespeare here dismisses by suavely declaring, “He tells not a half-truth but a truth and a half…”

My website changes are now compete. I know, breathless, ain’t it.

When I first set up this site it was to promote Chasing Medical Miracles. Now it’s morphed into a grab bag of content that, it appears, is promoting me. Which is odd because I’m a reticent self-promoter. I hear, however, that self-promotion is necessary and vital to achieving success not only as a writer but as a human being. (Sorry, hard to say that with a straight face.)

OK. These are the changes. Enjoy. Or not. Either way, send feedback regarding the pictures, the tone, the colors, the flow, the chi, the gestalt, the raison d’etre.

The idea to place advertising in books or “near” books is long overdue to make books a potent entertainment and viable choice so they can compete fairly with movies, TV, magazines, and the Internet. This article in the WSJ takes a look at how digital readers might open that door. “…The marketing world is drawing up plans to invade one of the last bastions of media that is largely advertising-free: books.
As e-books proliferate, advertisers are experimenting with ways to pitch to consumers while they read, a trend that could change the publishing business but faces opposition from some traditionalists…”

…Anne Carson’s new book comes in a box the color of a rainy day, with a sliver of a family snapshot on the front. Inside is a Xerox-quality reproduction of a notebook, made after the death of her brother, including text and photographs and letters, pasted-in inkjet printouts, handwriting, paintings and collage. “Nox” has no page numbers, and it’s accordion-folded. It carries a whiff of visual art multiple or gift shop souvenir or “Griffin & Sabine.” But trust me: it’s an Anne Carson book. Maybe her best…

“… But before we pass out the scepters, it’s instructive to contemplate how class distinctions work in America today. We’ve set up class divisions that are defined and determined not by blood lines but by education, achievement, notoriety, attractiveness, and most especially, wealth. We may not have the formal trappings of royalty, but we have plenty of barriers…”

My friend Scott Timberg has an article in today’s New York Times about a memoir written by the second wife of author Philip K. Dick. Oddly enough, this isn’t a plug because I read the article, had no idea Scott wrote it, visited Scott’s fantastic blog, The Misread City, and came full circle to find the source. Read Scott’s blog about the article here.

As always, Scott’s insights are spot on as he continues to provide reasons for renewed and renewing fascination with LA and all things substantive and cool.