A 5 star review for Atone!
It’s rare to find a novelist who can combine so many moving parts and blend them into a novel that will have you holding your breath and guessing to the last page. Wells has pulled it off!
A rudder for 2017
(This is a post from my newsletter. If you want to see more of these, please sign-up. Thank you.) As we set our sails for 2017, we will need to constantly adjust our rudder to steer us past the winds of change headed for our natural and virtual ecosystems. I hope my own actions are bolted […]
Review of The Ivory Game (Netflix)
I have watched this documentary twice, the first time to take in its scope, the second to understand what lies in the future for African elephants. Each time I am left asking: can the trafficking be stopped? Although a seemingly impossible task, the filmmakers show how dedicated, uncorrupt agents from Kenya and Tanzania collaborate with […]
The storm from an Ivory Cloud
As elephants die at the rate of thirty thousand a year, our own lives change. Most of us who are neither for or against ivory trafficking, watch on the sidelines. Occasionally, we might notice the statistics that spell out the tragic story. Putting aside the heartbreak, we’ll realize that all life matters and that one […]
The elephant in the room is the ruin of the elephant.
Like it or not, elephants are politically incorrect. Like the proverbial elephant in the room, the killing of elephants is something we know about, but would rather deny that the problem exists. The elephant problem is largely ignored for three reasons: African elephants are not found in America. They’re African, so the American perception is: […]
The fishy thing about Scale
I recently posted a video I produced of The Peconic Land Trust’s local food series called “Long Island Grown”. I came away from editing these conversations with local farmers and producers feeling optimistic about the future. That future, it seems to me, hinges on families building their lives, and staying together here on Long Island’s […]
Swimming in fiction’s deep sea
You’ve been writing for years. Then, one gorgeous summer night, you decide to commit to a writing life. You have floated in the sea of fiction, but now you want to compete with the best. So you work out. You build your strength for novel swimming. You hone your legs, abs, arms, and shoulders; the […]
A Library of Pebbles
It’s funny how we adapt. I always think of the extreme—how people deal with life during a war. You’ve seen the survivors: a child with flies drinking her tears, a woman walks through a bombed market, men sip espresso in shattered cafes, shopkeepers sweep up the broken glass. Let’s face it, people need to eat, […]
Sharing and the Privacy Trap.
You know how frustrating it is. You post an incomplete Tweet, or send a Facebook post without that photograph…or email someone with the attachment left off. It’s happened to everyone. We all need the freedom to check our drafts before pinning them to the public notice boards. We also have the right to NOT broadcast […]
A corrected trajectory.
At the beginning of the year I published my blog on what was trending in 2015. If you were following me then, you might recall that these were my predictions on music, social media, smartphones and cyber-security. (All linked in some way to my book, The Faces in the Rain.) I was thinking about how […]
That intuitive space
Letter #14: Managing space is something we all do. We exist in three dimensions, and, as sentient creatures we want to handle physical space in a way that suits us. While birds fly and build nests, we decorate homes, drive in traffic, and move in buildings where space has been well or poorly considered. […]
The power of watching: Shifting from me-watch to them-watch
Geoffrey Wells Letter #13: On Friday, the world’s largest company, Apple, released its new product–a watch. And well, it’s not only a watch. It’s well-connected, although the analog watch still has one advantage; it works without an iPhone. Samsung also released its new watch. No one is sure that these devices are going to take hold […]
Privacy: It’s personal. (Don’t read this!)
Geoffrey Wells Letter #12: I continue to explore the facets of privacy. It is a meme on the Internet today, and it is mutating from the embryo of the word private. The word is stealing DNA from the words, personal, confidential, secrets and identity. They are all closely related, though the distinction is important. There’s […]
Privacy: Precious and/or destructive choices
Geoffrey Wells letter #11: I start with a request: Listen to this Ethiopian jazz while reading the rest of this blog. Don’t ask me to explain why the music adds poignancy to the subject matter of privacy, except I will say that this subject seems to strike deep notes in the soul. (…and thanks to @worldisafrica […]
Geoffrey Wells Letter #10: The local planet.
I’m writing this blog on the first day of spring, Friday, March 20, 2015. It’s snowing. A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees…, well, they are shivering and shaking in the ground. The fluttering and dancing in the breeze will come later. The farm stands are still shuttered for the winter. While we eat California […]
Geoffrey Wells Letter #9: Goals worth earning, owning and sharing
The relentless thing about achieving a goal is that once you get there, you have to hang on to it. Otherwise, what’s the point? Can you say that you have achieved a goal, if you haven’t figured out how to keep it? Yet, the skills and talent it takes to reach the milestone of just […]
Geoffrey Wells Letter #8: Nina, Nelson and never again.
Recently, I’ve been hearing the same song. Everywhere, sung by a wide array of different artists. Odd. Because it’s like someone has put a spell on me. More odd, or odder, because, “I put a spell on you” is the song I hear, and every time, I think about Nina Simone–though the song was written by Jay […]
Geoffrey Wells’ Weekly Letter #7: Why done is better than not.
Hello again. This week I’ve been thinking about how, during the creative process, the elements of a project meld into a single unit, but only in the finishing stage. For years I have managed projects, from large multi-million dollar IT projects with diverse teams, to novels and small movies. My wife and I are in the […]
Geoffrey Wells’ Weekly Letter #6: Podcast, grassroots and an openness in local gov’t
Music: This week, I had the pleasure of talking to Sophocles Papavasilopoulos on a podcast of Composers at Play. On a previous post I mentioned this interesting series about composers who also perform. At my suggestion, Sophocles kindly agreed to create an episode about how writers describe music. I’ll be posting that podcast in this blog, (date […]
Geoffrey Wells’ Weekly Letter #5: Trust and the paradox of sharing.
Happy Valentine’s Day. If we trust the sharing economy, and are creative beings, then our need for privacy is at odds with our need to share. The creative process is impossible without time to think, to try options, to fail, to try again, and only when we are completely satisfied–only then–should we be free to […]
