Welcome back to Stone and Signal.  If you haven't heard the first episode yet you can find information on Episdoe 1 here.  The Podcast Links Edpisode 2 on YouTube Episode 2 on Spotify The Essay The Transcript      Tales That Touch The Earth Photo by Nitin Arya: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photography-of-book-page-1029141/ I didn’t plan to write this. Like many of the stories that find me, it arrived less as an idea and more as an ache. A pressure behind the ribs. Not urgent in the way headlines are urgent, but persistent, like something just below the surface asking to be named. In times of upheaval—personal, planetary, or both—I return to stories. Not the ones engineered to soothe or distract, but the ones that stay. Stories that don’t demand to be decoded, only lived with. The ones that surface years later in the pause before sleep, or on a quiet walk, or in a moment of grief when no facts will do. These are not stories of escape. They are stories of retur...

Social Media FAQ: The Hermit in the Town Square Yes, I’m online. No, I’m not built for this. Social media is one of the most challenging parts of being a writer today. I don’t come by the label “hermit” by chance. I prefer quiet, depth, solitude—and yet, here I am, in the digital town square, trying to be heard over the fire jugglers and brand mascots. This FAQ exists to answer the questions I get most often, and maybe a few I haven’t been asked but wish I had. It’s honest, occasionally cranky, and (hopefully) helpful. Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/facebook-application-icon-147413/ What social media platforms are you on? The list shifts like tectonic plates. As of now, I’m on Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Skylight. I also have a TikTok account, along with a few others quietly gathering dust. I’m still searching for my homestead in the social media sprawl—somewhere functional, semi-peaceful, and not owned by a billionaire with a god complex. ...

  Announcing Stone and Signal – A Podcast That Listens Back We are not starving for information. It is cast on us like a stream of projectile vomit that we attempt to avoid, only to slip and fall in the still-warm pile of dog crap already left in our path. No, it is not information we are starving for, but meaning. We live in a time where almost everything can be heard—yet almost nothing is truly listened to. The world hums with data, voices, opinions, instructions, algorithms. But beneath it all, something quieter waits. Something more real. That’s where Stone and Signal was born. This is a pre-release announcement. The podcast is still in production, but the signal is forming. And it feels right to speak to the why before the world hears the what. Why This Podcast, and Why Now? For years I’ve wrestled with the tension between expression and silence. As a writer, I’ve always lived in the written word—fiction, poetry, and storytelling that lingers in the slower currents of ...