We now have brand new Cumberland Farms store on the small island where I live, and I have come to the conclusion that it’s the most depressing place on earth. The original outlet on the edge of town had a bodega-like quality, an inviting shabbiness. The  seedy summer… Read full post »

 

 

This is a true story, from an inside source, and a useful template for working on your own writing.

 

So, Henry Kissinger calls in one of his aides and asks for a status report on the Allende regime in Chile. This is sometime in 1971. The kid… Read full post »

 

 

So you might be wondering how an unknown, thirty year old high school art teacher landed a one-man show at the venerable and exclusive Barudsky Gallery on Madison Avenue, leaping effortlessly over the thousands of aspiring artists rejected there every year and alighting like a… Read full post »

 

 

 

Law of Plot: Let situations and characters expand to explain their behavior and the events of the story. The character needs some specialized knowledge suddenly, in Chapter 10? Now you know what he studied in grad school. And that he went to grad school in the… Read full post »

 

 

As I was working this morning I recognized a small significant fact about narrative writing in general: any description or aphorism gains tremendous value when it’s attributed rather than merely expressed by the narrator.

It’s like the matching funds in a PBS fund d… Read full post »

                   

 

                            &nbs… Read full post »

 

  

 

 

I was finishing my mother’s portrait when my father’s show began.

I had lost track of time. I was so close to the end, I could ‘smell the barn’ as Mom used to say. She always told me it was easy getting her horse to gallop… Read full post »

 

 

Matthew and Mary Crawley, in happier days

 

The season finale of Downton Abbey, which aired on PBS last night, was shown at Christmas in England and ruined the holiday for the whole country. Old fashioned letters poured in, along with angry e-mails and distraught/… Read full post »

 

 

 

The night before his four-decade retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, Harlan Mallory was standing on a deserted Nantucket beach, under high cold stars and a waning moon, dousing his portrait of Ruth with gasoline.

He had been working on the… Read full post »

 

 

 

Watching Stephanie Abrams, Mike Bettes and Jim Cantore hyping the modest snowfall they’re calling Winter Storm Nemo this morning, I had a vision of a kinder, gentler and less hysterical weather channel, that didn’t try to exaggerate every minor weather event… Read full post »

 

 

 

 Th is is Part Four of NOWHERE MAN,  my deal-with-the-Devil, time travel romantic adventure movie.

For Part Three, and farther back -- follow the link:

http://open.salon.com/blog/steven_axelrod/2013/02/02/when_nick_meets_nick

 

EXT. MOLLOY HOUSE - NIGHT
Li… Read full post »

 

 

 

Early in the third season of this extraordinary show – now airing on PBS – Lord Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham’s American mother-in -law arrives at the venerable estate for her grand-daughter Mary’s wedding. A small culture war erupts between the… Read full post »

Here's a link to Part 2, which contains a link to part 1 ...

http://open.salon.com/blog/steven_axelrod/2013/01/31/a_deal_with_the_devil

 

 

EXT. DIGITEC INDUSTRIES -DAY. ESTABLISHING
SUPER: November, 2003
A glittering modern building, all white concrete and tinted glass, rises out of… Read full post »

 

 

 

This is part two of Nowhere Man. For Part One, click here:

http://open.salon.com/blog/steven_axelrod/2013/01/30/nowhere_man_part_one 

 

NICK
No, no, wait a second. Hold on. I can’t -- I -- this is nuts. This is some kind of ... I don’t know. Whate… Read full post »

 

 

Welcome to the serrialization of my deal-with-the-Devil-time-travel-romantic adventure movie script, Nowhere Man.

Here's the gist --

Nick Molloy sells his soul to the devil to go back ten years in time and give his younger clueless self advice. When he returns to the present t… Read full post »

 

The banner outside the gallery, six feet high and twenty feet across, said:

Stepping Out of the Shadow

The Next Generation:

Mallory, Kopko & Shea

 

            I was too stunned to react, but I could feel the reactio/… Read full post »

 

 

Walking my dog this morning as the blustery edge of a Nor’Easter plucked at my little island, I saw a woman about my age speed walking up Main Street. “Good morning,” she said. “Excellent morning!” I answered. “Isn’t it wonderful?” s/…

Read full post »

 

 

Robert Mallory has been painting under an assumed name -- Raoul Morris, to avoid being tagged as nothing more than the son of his world-famous father. But Natalie Crane, the downtown gallery owner who has given him his first group show, was far too shrewd to believe in,… Read full post »

 

It took four days -- ninety six hours of hope, regret, bitterness and busywork. I was counting the minutes to my first gallery opening, working on the portrait, managing the end-of-semester details of tests and grading and final reports, trying to help my kids sort out the complicated… Read full post »

 

 

 My worst week ever began pretty well.

I woke up the Sunday before my first group gallery show, made love with Joanna Clark and fielded an early morning phone call from Natalie Crane, asking me for more pictures. One of the other artists had dropped out and the… Read full post »

 

 

This will be short because fables were the first flash fiction. Aesop got to the point.

Barnes and Noble is locked in what can only be called a death match with Amazon. The only thing keeping the company alive right now is its on-going investment in  e-reader… Read full post »

 

 

 

 

 

Two years ago, I watched the first fifteen minutes of David Simon’s New Orleans post-Katrina HBO drama Treme, and turned it off, irritated and confused. Who were all these people? What was going on? And why should I care?

    &nbs… Read full post »

 

 

This memorial service, Harlan Mallory decided, lifting the last bottle of Veuve out of its cardboard box, was going to be exactly the kind of party that Oliver Graeme hated most. Tough shit, pal: the revenge of the living. Oliver had specified that he wanted his… Read full post »

 

 

 

It was a classic Facebook story.

I hadn’t heard from Jesus for a long time, I kind of left the Church in a huff over male pattern balding, hang-nails and Justin Bieber. He was all “It’s my Dad’s fault” but you have to take some responsibilit… Read full post »