Hell is High Standards
Think about it.
Book Ideas
How the Dead Could Blog
Here’s a wild, catchy idea: Start a blog by dead people. Blog of the Living Dead. Not talking zombies, but people who lived in the past. They wrote like crazy … letters, journals, essays. Even old song lyrics. The idea would be to excerpt any writings that sound the most like blogs. Personal confessions. Like the Read More …
A Job I’d Really Love to Have
An assignment to write: Air Guitar for Dummies. Aha, you think it’d be a challenge! What could anybody say? But, hey, doesn’t matter! Anybody who’d buy the book gotta be too dim to tell it makes sense or not.
The Classics With Less Class
Take an old book and add some steamier scenes. Or wilder adventures. Add trouble of a greater order of magnitude. Same story, more action, less angst. Scarlet Letter: Hester Prynne whips out an uzi and shows those prudes a thing or two. They once had Classic Comics (maybe they still do?), visually retellings of famous stories. These Read More …
Kid Critics
A funny newspaper column or book would be a collection of opinions by kids about adult likes and dislikes. Kids try pate. Cigarettes. Wine. The evening news. C-Span. Shakespeare. Caviar. Business suits. The Wall Street Journal. Brie. Slim-Fast. Might make a very “emperor’s new clothes” kind of point: Maybe adults don’t really some this boring, Read More …
Suspensing Information: Storytelling Textbooks
Textbooks can be dry and tedious. But suppose they were written in a livelier fashion by using suspense. Intrigue with foreshadowing titles (“The decision that decided the war”) and keep hooking ’em with mysteries, puzzles and precarious predicaments. Add in all sorts of amusing and interesting asides (quizzes, quotes, cartoons, even jokes) and kids might enjoy learning more.
Stephen King Abridged
Yes, Stephen King is right: His fans like long books. People like suspense, and lengthy books prolong it. But the busy and/or lazy among us might also become fans if half-as-long versions of his golden oldies were available. (Call the line “All the horror in half the time.”) Reader’s Digest once published a series of “condensed books,” but there were Read More …
How about a ‘Rocky & Bullwinkle’ blog?
As I mentioned before, it’d be great to revive Rocky and Bullwinkle in a series of novels. Loony spy adventures … deadpan humor … chapters with punny titles … somebody sign me up, please! But he’s a more up-to-date idea, blog these new adventures, featuring a new installment every day. Perhaps written as a diary by Rocky or Bullwinkle or Read More …
‘Counterintuitive,’ a Book That’s the Opposite of ‘Blink’
Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling Blink provocatively asks, how is it the mind sometimes understands in a flash highly complex situations that seem to defy rigorous analysis. No question that’s true. But so is the opposite: Sometimes, our minds lie to us, just can’t believe conclusions science tells us to be true. Flip five heads in a row, the odds Read More …
More Ideas for Books
These book ideas I wrote down years ago might not be worth stealing, but maybe they’ll help you fire up a better one. Where’s Jesus? Like Where’s Waldo? but for religious types. Helpful Hints From O.J. Simpson Chapters (without admitting anything!) include How to Cut and Juke Your Way to Freedom, How to Hide Incriminating Knives, How to Read More …
5 TV Characters You Meet in Heaven
Goofy idea. You know how deceased TV series have reunion shows? Of course, you do. Well, how about a reunion of deceased TV characters? Characters that got bumped off, rubbed out, erased, scriptwise and screenlifewise. Mrs. Hoober(?) from Desperate Housewives, George’s fiancee from Seinfeld, Shannon from Lost, the possibilities are many. They’d meet in some Read More …
Book: Getting in Touch With Your Inner Hippie
Full title idea: Getting in Touch With Your Inner Hippie in an Increasingly Corporate PC World. No, this isn’t a guide to mind-enhancing drugs. It’d be about peace and love and joy, bypassing the all-too-familiar avenues of ambition and fear. If someone writes this, I’ll buy a copy. I could use the advice.
Easy Action Plan to Begin a Business: Teach a Class
One worry I have is that many of the ideas here are tricky to turn into a business. But here’s a way to make money right away, have income to write off expenses, get feedback, find possible collaborators, and collect information that could become a book: Teach an evening class at a local high school. Want to write a Read More …
Book: ‘Don’t Get Even, Get Over It’
You know the expression: “Don’t get mad, get even.” Now, while I do agree sometimes a little anger can be good, if it motivates some civil sticking-up for oneself, “getting even” is rarely the route to happiness. For anybody. Thus the idea for the book: Don’t Get Mad, Get Over It. I’d also like to Read More …
Peace Bombs: KABOOM! Candy Everywhere!
Eye for an eye never works because the cycle never ends. So instead of retaliating, set an example for a better way to behave. It’d take some “vigilante” group to set this up, because no government ever will. But instead of deadly bombs, explode tasty ones. KABOOM! Candy’s rolling all over the streets. Ultimately, kindness strategies will win more hearts and minds and sympathy Read More …