Andy writes!

How do we make reading fun again?

Reading for pleasure is down. What’s a writer to do?

As a kid growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, I remember public service announcements interrupting my Saturday-morning cartoon time to tell me about an organization called Reading Is Fundamental. RIF is still around, and still working to promote literary among children in the U.S., but judging from a recent study of American’s reading habits, fewer people in this country are reading for pleasure than they were two decades ago.

A PSA for Reading Is Fundamental

According to this study, “reading for pleasure in the United States has declined by more than 40% over the last 20 years–raising urgent questions about the cultural, educational and health consequences of a nation reading less.”

My ‘new’ short story’s long road to publication

A story 45 years in the making has finally found a home.

Today, a short story I first drafted in the 1990s–and that began as a stubborn idea some 45 years ago–has broken free of its chrysalis and flung itself into the world.

“Shah Mat” makes its long-awaited (for me, anyway) debut in the latest issue of a new literary magazine, The Orange Rose.

“Shah Mat” is one of several writings I drafted in the mid-1990s, in a flurry of creative activity over several months, then set aside as I started to focus more on my career and other writing endeavors. Most of those drafts remain in that form and may never see publication, for good reason.