Category Archives: Fiction

Writing lessons from dishwashing, 40 years on

Here’s why Moses wandered the Sinai Desert for four decades: When you reach your sixties, four decades is the blink of an eye.

“Come on, old man, when are we getting to the Promised Land?” the Israelites surely told the grizzled prophet. “It’s been forty years already.”

“You’re kidding. Seems like only yesterday we left Egypt.”

Such were my thoughts during a recent trip to Seattle when Nonna and I dropped by Julia’s in Wallingford. In the fall of 1984, I was an impoverished writer working as a dishwasher at the popular restaurant. Time flies, but that wasn’t the only conclusion I drew four decades on. Rather, the trip reminded me that in hard times you aren’t always aware of the greater plot of your life.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Books, Fiction, Writing

Mourning a hero frogman

In my new novel, The Insurrectionist, a plucky FBI frogman drowns in a rural pond during a raid on a family who protested (peacefully) during the Capitol Hill riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Read about the national day of mourning that follows.

The media frenzy peaked with the funeral of Frogman Jones. A blond female-presenting announcer with CBS’ Inside Edition began her coverage, “A sendoff for a hero, as FBI Frogman Jericho Jones was honored today at the citadel of democracy he died defending.” The viewing in the Capitol Rotunda drew a milelong line of mourners snaking through the streets. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, and President Biden knelt before a sarcophagus modeled after Lorenzo de Medici’s in Florence (draped in reclining marble nudes representing Twilight and Dawn, with Jones, wearing a Roman helmet with the visor up, gazing down on them).

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Books, Drama, Fiction, novel, The Insurrectionist

The Insurrectionist trailer

By popular demand, here’s the video my younger son and I put together to ballyhoo my new novel, The Insurrectionist.

The topic? A reporter pursuing a Jan. 6-related story ends up entangling two families—including his own—in an FBI investigation. The Insurrectionist, a darkly satirical novel, lampoons the news media and woke America.

Check out the novel here.

Leave a comment

Filed under Books, Elephants, Fiction, novel, Russell Working, The Insurrectionist

Dangerous new satire launches

Fiction! Disinformation! Run and hide, while there’s still time!

They told my agent my new novel could not be published. Too dangerous! You’re not allowed to question the Jan. 6 narrative, they said. It was the worst crisis since the Civil War, since the Visigoths sacked Rome. Delete your account.

He tried valiantly, but there were no takers, and we parted ways amicably. So I am publishing The Insurrectionist myself. And today the novel launches, in both paperback and ebook formats.

What’s it about?

Denied a promised posting in Paris, Ian Landquart, a reporter with the storied Chicago Bullet newspaper, is shunted off to a suburban bureau and assigned to redact racist language from the historical archives.

To salvage his career, he investigates an elephant-owning farmer who protested nonviolently on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. But as Ian gins up an FBI probe, he learns that his progressive teenage daughter is dating the farmer’s conservative, gun-owning son—ensnaring the teens in the case.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Books, Fiction, Free speech, Media, novel, Russell Working