Tag: amazing

Margerumalia – Halloween Kittens

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – October 31, 2025

Here’s a bit of a fright: five more kittens! 

Three torties (tortoise shell markings), one tabby (already looking like her mother), and one black cat (a Halloween kitty).

If you’re thinking you only see four in the photo, zoom in on the black kitten in the middle of the kittenkaboodle*. Its head is down but if you can find the eyes, you’ll suddenly see the fifth kitten. It’s like one of those Magic Eye pictures. 

While you’re looking closely, check out the paw of the tortie to the far right. There’s a bright white patch on the toe, like a mani-pedi gone awry. But totally adorable. I’ve already started calling her Toe White.

We’re thinking we can drop one in the first five Trick-or-Treat bags that open up when we answer the doorbell. A trick that grows into a treat! Probably throw in a can of cat food for good measure.

So all that time we spent worrying about getting Tabitha back to her unseen kittens when we took her to the vet was absolutely accurate! And she’s now bringing them around for us to take over the feeding of the brood. We’re pretty sure they’re nesting under the deck by way of a small opening at the steps.

In my updates from the last few months I’ve mentioned how streetwise Tabitha is—dare I say cagey—and that she won’t walk into the humane trap we used before. 

I’ve imagined the old fashioned upside-down cardboard box held up by a stick, but you have to be there to pull the string, AND be ready to hold down the box during the thrashing of a frightened feral cat, AND have a way to transfer the cat from the box to a cat carrier. Not very practical.

I’ve also thought about childhood TV cartoons of a dog catcher carrying a big net on a stick. They don’t do that anymore.

Tabitha still needs to get those non-dissolving stitches removed, so stay tuned for more updates and more precious kitten pictures.

TTFN

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I thoroughly enjoyed my Saturday at Main Street Books in Lafayette, made several new friends and got to encourage a 12-year-old girl who already knew she wanted to be a writer. I could see her mother’s gratitude and approval for what I was saying. Their mutual thanks were really special to me.

I also got to reunite with some of the high school students I had directed in plays over the last few years. They were at the Farmer’s Market outside and were so enthusiastic about coming in to see me. They have a play coming up this weekend and I’m excited to see what they’ve accomplished under their new director.

After the book signing, Debbie and I visited one other former high school student working up the street. They are already out of college, also a writer of plays, and we got to talk shop between customers. They work at Scones & Doilies and let me tell you, walking into that bakery, the aroma alone will register an additional five pounds on your bathroom scale. And you won’t object because it’s heavenly! We bought a few treats, including gluten free options that Debbie could enjoy.

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If you received this email because it was forwarded to you by a subscriber, welcome. You can subscribe as well by following the link on my website: ericmargerum.com. A free story awaits you there.

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*kittenkaboodle—get out your scorecard, Eric has added one more word to the English language!

Margerumalia – Encountering Bradbury

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – October 17, 2025

Ray Bradbury. On campus. In person!

It was my first semester at the University of Southern California where I was working on my Master’s Degree, and one of the great icons of science fiction was coming to campus to speak!

The man who wrote Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and countless short stories. THAT Ray Bradbury. 

And because I was born in October, he clearly wrote The October Country just for me. I had to meet him!

What made me think of him for this newsletter? I’ve been listening to his novel Death Is A Lonely Business, another Bradbury masterpiece that he wrote in 1985. It features a young aspiring writer in 1949 living alone in Venice, California, who gets caught up in a murder mystery that’s rife with haunting metaphors of fog and mist, and a pay phone that rings in the middle of the night only to deliver the sound of a distant person breathing.

Bradbury doesn’t write horror, he writes the stuff that makes you pull your covers over your head to protect yourself from the monsters under the bed. The psychological terror of childhood fears. He’s a poet of anxiety, a purveyor of winds off the graveyard.

In this novel, his protagonist is writing some of the same stories that Bradbury himself wrote in his younger years. An informed reader will hear the echoes of stories like “The Fog Horn,” “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit,” and many more. I was transported to when I had first read these stories and felt like Bradbury was telling me the origin of each story.

In his talk at USC, he pointed through the dark auditorium, his finger penetrating the walls and across the quad. “The library,” he told us, “that’s your most important education of all right behind you.” The university had a huge library. “Go read,” he told us, “anything you can get your hands on. That’s where you’ll learn the most. One book will lead you to the next and the next… Never stop.”

I never have.

While I sat listening to him speak I thought about the many stories he had adapted into short plays, and I wrote him an invitation to see me in my first play at USC, Eugene O’Neil’s “Ah, Wilderness!” I promised to reserve two tickets for him if he could make it.

The other advice he gave about writing was entirely practical: begin by writing short stories. You can spend a year writing a terrible novel and it’ll waste a year of your time, or you can write fifty-two short stories, one a week, and sell at least one. He defied anyone to write fifty-two terrible stories in a row, one of them was going to be good!

A few years later I wrote one story and sent it in to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. I sent it on paper, through the mail, with an SASE (Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope) so they could send me their reply. I still have that story in my files, and my rejection slip. I was too embarrassed to send it out to another magazine, or to write fifty-one more. My bad.

I was also embarrassed when I handed Mr. Bradbury my hand-written invitation to see my play. Others were waiting in line for autographs but I had to run to class so I just handed him the folded paper. 

“Does it have your return address?” he asked, stopping to take me in, probably seeing a reflection of himself in my eyes. 

“No,” I answered, “you don’t have to answer it.” 

I still picture him opening up my note and reading it long after the play was done, thinking to himself “I’d like to have seen that.”

TTFN

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Tabitha is still coming to eat her medicated food, but we’re going to run out. We need to capture her soon. Her son, GG, looks in the window to see if I’ll come out to pet him while he eats. He also lies on top of the picnic table outside to watch TV with us every night.

He’s so ready to be domesticated.

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For anyone who lives around Lafayette, Indiana, I’ll be signing copies of The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles at Main Street Books on Saturday, October 25th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. 

The books make a good holiday gift for children ages 8 to 12. I’ve heard from parents and grandparents who have read the book aloud—the original audiobook—saying they created special memories with the young folk. 

I can sell you a MAMLA coffee mug for your hot apple cider, and I’ll be giving away bookmarks and mazes if you just want to come by and say hi.

October 25th is the last day of the Farmer’s Market for the 2025 season. Always a fun time and just a block away from Main Street Books.

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If you received this email because it was forwarded to you by a subscriber, welcome. You can subscribe as well by following the link on my website: ericmargerum.com. A free story awaits you there.

Margerumalia – Molly the Maid

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – October 10, 2025

Tabitha Deferred

The saga of Tabitha has reached a stalemate for the time being. She will not re-enter the cage to eat food and spring the trap, but after several days of not eating she showed up at our back door looking thin and forlorn. So we fed her…with medication. She ate more than one-and-a-half cans.

She still needs to have her sutures removed, but her rear end didn’t look swollen last time we could see it. Maybe she bit through them while cleaning herself?

Hopefully she’ll trust us once more to provide food and care and have her stitches out at the vet, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Meanwhile, I have an excellent book to recommend:

The Maid, by Nita Prose

Like me, you’ve probably seen this book cover several times over the last few years. It was selected for the GMA Book Club, among other things. I saw the audiobook on sale and decided to give it a spin.

I like whodunnits and, having worked retail, served coffee and bartending, I figured I could relate to the service aspect of a hotel maid. 

But Molly is a maid with a difference. 

Molly is the first person narrator, so her perspective isn’t entirely explained. She seems to be on the autism spectrum, as she admits to having difficulty discerning other people’s emotions. She is also obsessive about cleaning rooms, her clothing, and her apartment.

Molly is also very observant, like her TV hero Columbo. She and her Gran used to watch that show together all the time, making her a perceptive detective.

When Molly enters to clean a room in The Grand Hotel she discovers the dead body of a very rich man. She becomes a prime witness, and later the prime suspect. 

Molly’s point of view is delivered with perfection by Lauren Ambrose in the audiobook, conveying her confusion, frustration, and emotions. I suspect that if you read the book yourself, you’ll also hear Molly’s voice in your mind. The narrative is written that well.

No spoilers here, but I will say that I was surprised by a few twists and turns near the end of the novel and even got a bit choked up by the sentiment in that part of the story. 

Speaking of the end, do not skip the epilogue. Writers these days are discouraged from presenting a prologue or an epilogue because, they say, it should just be part of the book. I don’t have an opinion on that, but if you skip the epilogue of The Maid you’ll miss the most interesting twist of all.

I see that Nita Prose has written additional books for this character, but this first book is completely self-contained, no cliff-hanger or unanswered questions. You could start and stop with this first book and feel very satisfied. 

Thanks, Nita, I appreciate that. I don’t like those stray hairs any more than Molly does.

TTFN

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – Tabitha, Part 3

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – October 3, 2025

PHOTO: Debbie Margerum

When I left off last week, Tabitha had stepped on the metal plate to trigger the door spring and we whisked her off to Purdue Veterinary Clinic. Then we made the decision to bring her back and release her so she could go nurse her kittens somewhere out there in the woods.

We had decided to trust her to trust us. 

Now you’re caught up.

After feeding her the canned food with the stool softener, we lifted the cage door and she pulled back like the photo above from when she was captured. 

“C’mon, Tabby, we brought you back to feed your little ones. Go.” 

I pressed my finger against her backside through the bars of the cage and she dashed out, crossed the deck, and disappeared into the brush. 

“Just please come back, so we can give you more medicine.” 

A moment after she left I realized that I had touched her for the first time since she was born over two years ago. In the past she had been willing to touch her nose to my finger, and I’d settled for “butterfly kisses” from her whiskers but I always wanted to pet her. She was soft and furry, of course, and a little bit scrawny, but mostly I felt her warmth and the moment of connection that came with it. Interesting what your finger can tell you in a brief touch.

It was a bucket list moment. Brief but meaningful. 

God bless that cat, she’s returned to eat every morning since. And I know the medicine is working because I saw her in the neighbor’s yard a few days later when she lifted her tail to spew brown liquid generously across the grass. Sorry, Cindy.

The current conundrum (or cat-nundrum) is our need to catch her again to have the sutures removed. On Monday morning she sat by the cage staring at the food for twenty minutes hoping to get her daily bowlful, then gave up and left.

No food. No medication. Did we make a mistake by letting her loose? Or did we save her kittens? 

The vet checked her for lactation and was uncertain whether she was actively nursing because of the low amount of milk they could express. We chose to let her feed them if at all possible—these kittens we’ve never seen.

I started writing about this series of events two weeks ago with “Fear of the Unknown,” and we’re still fearing the unknown. A reflection of our times, isn’t it?

Meanwhile I finished writing the adventure of the two girls in The Most Amazing Museum of Chicago and got them safely away from The Great Chicago Fire. More unknowns ahead for me and my characters!

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If you received this email because it was forwarded to you by a subscriber, welcome. You can subscribe as well by following the link on my website: ericmargerum.com. A free story awaits you there.

Margerumalia – Writers on Display

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – September 12, 2025

I was honored to receive an email recently telling me that my book would be featured in a display at The Caretaker’s Cottage curated by the West Lafayette Public Library. My wife and I went over to see it and she took this photo of me. You can see MAMLA on the top shelf of the display case farthest to the right.

It’s quite the incentive to put my nose to the grindstone and finish my sequel, The Most Amazing Museum of Chicago. I have 10,335 words written on my first draft, so that’s not nothing! 

The Caretaker’s Cottage was remodeled into a beautiful little museum that the public library set up and it sits on the edge of Grandview Cemetery, where my parents and grandmother are buried. The cottage was built around the turn of the twentieth century and housed the cemetery caretaker and his family.

The grand view, now hidden by majestic maples and towering oak trees, looked down the hillside and across the Wabash River, providing a spectacular vista of Lafayette.

I used to walk or ride my bike past that cemetery on my way to junior high school and always found it calming, not frightening like cemeteries in the movies.

The rotating displays of the museum honors West Lafayette residents from soldiers to sports figures to writers, telling the story of our city. There used to be a display of my mother’s campaign memorabilia and some highlights of her twenty-four years as mayor. That exhibit and more are now housed on the top floor of the public library.

A less comfortable story, but vital to tell, is that West Lafayette was once a sun-down town. That means that everyone who was not white had to leave the town by the time the sun went down. Non-whites were allowed to clean houses and do manual labor, but they could not live here. 

This practice ended before I was born, but it sends a cold spike into my guts when I think about it. The docent admitted that she benefitted from generational wealth, living in the house that her grandparents built about a century ago. She even showed us a copy of the deed they signed with large letters excluding non-whites. It was poignant. 

What is it they say in Alcoholics Anonymous? Before you can begin mending, you have to admit you have a problem? I’m glad to see the racial mix across the city and when I work part time at the Junior/Senior High School. I hope we, as a nation, can continue to mend and learn from our history how ever uncomfortable it may be. 

We are, after all, the human race. We are one people. 

TTFN

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – 20 Years Since Katrina

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – September 5, 2025

I was preparing to direct a stage version of Dead Man Walking in Wichita when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

The Death Penalty Discourse Center operated out of that area. Had they even received the check for the performance rights? I had no way of knowing, and they were unreachable. Louisiana was hit hard.

There was nowhere to go but forward. 

Sister Helen Prejean’s bestselling memoir had been adapted into an Academy Award winning movie and, as a theatre professor working in a university founded by nuns, I knew this would be a significant opportunity. The hurricane turned many lives upside down and this play did the same.

I gathered a cast of very talented and dedicated actors who understood the gravity of this story and the questions of life and death. Even my eight-year-old daughter played an important role as the surviving sister of the murder victim. She delivered a haunting performance as the forgotten child, emotionally abandoned by her parents who were drowning in their own grief.

A local sister who ministered to prisoners on death row came to speak to the cast about “her men.” She told us moving stories of the men who lived daily with the regret of their deeds and their desire to make things right with the survivors, their consciences, and God. Her words transformed them from monsters into flawed human beings. 

For the execution scene, the university choir recorded a moving rendition of “Amazing Grace” that played through the prisoner’s death and the removal of his body on the gurney. The audience didn’t know that the sweet tenor solo in the recording was sung by the actor playing the prisoner. 

I have personal notes from several actors thanking me for the opportunity to live and feel the reality of their characters. One even described how she and the actors playing the parents of the murdered girl broke down in a group hug backstage, holding one another and weeping. She was thanking me for that experience.

My wife and I watched TV for weeks during Katrina recovery efforts, saddened by the mounting death toll.

Eventually the check did clear. Sister Helen and the members of The Death Penalty Discourse Center were among the survivors. I’m sure they were changed by the experience. I know we were.

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If you received this email because it was forwarded to you by a subscriber, welcome. You can subscribe as well by following the link on my website: ericmargerum.com. A free story awaits you there.

Margerumalia – Elephant Jokes

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – August 22, 2025

“You don’t get down off an ostrich. You get down off a duck.”

My latest entry for the New Yorker’s weekly caption contest. 

I admit, I borrowed the punchline from one of the many elephant jokes that were popular when I was a kid. I’ll also admit that I didn’t know what duck down was when I was that age. I thought the entire joke was based on the size of an elephant compared to the size of a duck. Obviously it’d be far easier to dismount a duck because you could just stand up. LOL.

Years later, when I actually understood the joke, I got to laugh about it all over again.

I consider this caption my homage to the well-known elephant joke. That’s not stealing, it’s a salute to the original. It also makes the reader imagine what the guy on the ground asked to get that response.

In improv this type of laugh line—a reminder about something said previously—is known as a call-back. Audiences adore a good call-back. It’s equivalent to an elbow in the ribs, including them in the joke while saying “See what I did there?”

I performed with an improv group in Los Angeles that was called Synthaxis. (Shout out to Margo and Phil who recently reminded me of that name!) If improv wasn’t difficult enough, we had the added challenge of being a children’s improv group. That meant we were playing in a world without guns, drugs, bad words, or naughty bits. Go ahead! Feel free to make stuff up, just dance around those land mines! 

One of those land mines was getting a “grab,” a suggestion from the audience.

I’ll never forget one time when me and another guy were asking the audience to name an activity and the only response was a wise guy who said “making love.” There are often several suggestions to choose from but when everyone heard that, the suggestions dried up.

My scene partner and I looked at each other, didn’t say a word, and started to mime hauling large objects around like a couple of furniture movers. We stacked one large object on top of the other for a couple of minutes until we were satisfied and stepped back to look at what we had made. 

“L – O – V – E,” one of us said. 

“LOVE,” said the other. 

And then we shook hands and congratulated one another.

It brought the house down! Second only to a good call-back is taking an impossible grab and figuring out a way to play it anyway.

Those moments are the “war stories” that actors share for years, the way athletes relive an amazing play that wins the game.

I hope you have some amazing “war stories” to share with friends and family. It can make for delightful nostalgia. Most story telling does.

TTFN

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By the way, do you know how to make an elephant float? 

Root beer, two scoops of ice cream, and some elephant!

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If you received this email because it was forwarded to you by a subscriber, welcome. You can subscribe as well by following the link on my website: ericmargerum.com. A free story awaits you there.

Margerumalia – Pain Experts

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – August 15, 2025

I had something to say to the guy wearing this T-shirt. 

Trust me, I’m not stupid. I know better than to get all confrontational. Especially when the guy next to him looks like he eats three bowls of Steroidios for breakfast every day. Besides, I saw the pack of shirtless teens jogging past me in the park. They’ll be back soon.

I had just finished listening to the latest Serial podcast: “The Retrievals, Season 2.” It’s about women who have gone through Cesarean Sections with inadequate anesthesia. Remarkably, the message from these women is that if they say they can feel everything, that’s because THEY CAN FEEL EVERYTHING.

And you know what the problem has been? Communication. 

The good news is that nurses, doctors, surgeons, and anesthesiologists really don’t want their patients to suffer. The bad news is that they haven’t learned the language skills to understand the difference between discomfort and pain. Until now.

Through the harrowing stories of the patients and staff, we learn what they are thinking, what their expectations are, and what they’re assuming rather than understanding. With the right words, the right communication skills, the difference is revolutionary, giving everyone the basis for understanding and permission to change the process. 

My wife can tell you that I’m more than a bit squeamish about graphic imagery. And I admit to crossing my arms across my abdomen a few times while listening. But that’s empathy. That’s the experience of stories, truth or fiction.

So I had to say something to this marine. 

I approached the car and said that I saw the words on the back of his shirt and wanted to tell him that pain is an indicator. A message that something needs attention. So it’s important to listen to your body. 

I told him how my wife and I encourage one another to take our cues from pain to change what we’re doing or to take a break from what’s causing that pain. 

Both young men listened respectfully—as marines are taught to do—but I saw that quick glance they shared, so I tried to lighten the moment. 

“Age is probably a big factor when you’re 40 years older than those boys running through the park,” and we all smiled knowingly, “but there are times when you have to pay attention to that indicator and not do more damage.” They nodded and thanked me, calling me sir. “I just needed to say after reading your shirt,” I added.

Did I make any difference? I don’t know. Did the NFL listen to accounts of Traumatic Brain Injury? The jury may still be out on that question.

It’s so important to speak up. To communicate. To listen. 

Maybe you can make a difference. 

Serial episodes are available wherever podcasts are offered. Both seasons of “The Retrievals” are excellent. I recommend them. 

TTFN

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – Thesaurus Anyone?

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – August 1, 2025

PHOTO: Facebook @ForReadingAddicts

Have you had it up to here with hearing the word “unprecedented”? I have. 

The other day a news anchor interrupted herself to apologize for using the word before she said it. Again. When “unprecedented” becomes attached to “sorry for using this word so much” it’s time to stop using it. Don’t ya think?

It’s like the commercials on TV that cause us to dive for the remote and desperately stab at the mute button so we don’t have to hear that annoying voice yet again. 

I don’t do that with Progressive commercials because they’re so creative and humorous, and they’re usually replaced before I can grow weary of them.

Using my Merriam-Webster Thesaurus app, I found several substitutes for unprecedented. Words like fresh, new, novel, original, pioneering, and trailblazing all have a degree of admiration that might be too much praise for a news program, but words like unconventional, unheard-of, and even unique would be welcome replacements.

Notice in the paragraph above I referred to synonyms by mentioning a thesaurus and then used the words “substitutes” and “replacements” rather than using “synonyms” several times over. 

This is the joy of the English Language! We have so many options with so many shades of meaning. 

The other day I started a short story completely unrelated to my drafting of The Most Amazing Museum of Chicago and I couldn’t quite find my way into writing it until I tried it in second person (using the pronoun “you”). Suddenly it landed just right, creating a mood I didn’t even know I wanted. But that word “you” tripped me up a bit. There’s no alternative word in second person, even first person has the variance of I/me. 

That’s my challenge as a writer. What are my options? How do I solve this puzzle so my reader doesn’t dive for the remote. I don’t know yet but I’ll be working on it.

It’s strange, it’s novel, it’s new. Just not unprecedented.

By the way, precedence just means it happened before. It’d be okay to say “nothing like this has ever happened before.”

We have a saying in theatre: less is more. 

Would less use of “unprecedented” be more than I could hope for?

TTFN

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – Viewers Like You

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – July 25, 2025

Leah, the youngest girl in The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles got her start thanks to PBS.

It began when Debbie was reading a book to our young daughter who started reading the words as well. Had she just memorized her favorite book? Kids are like that, they soak things up like sponges. Debbie pulled out a book that she knew our daughter had never seen and asked her to read it.

She did. Our little sponge had taught herself how to read.

How, you ask? We credit PBS.

All her favorite programs were on PBS, from “Sesame Street” to “Barney” to “Between The Lions” and more. All the groundwork was laid out to help her learn how to read and do basic math. 

When she got tested for Kindergarten, the teacher told us she was already reading at a fourth grade level. We started referring to her as “a smarticle.” 

The character of Leah is also a five year old—”almost six” she tells people—who taught herself how to read. Her adventure in Eveningwhere with teen step-sister, Vanessa, shows how very smart she is.

PBS helped educate our daughter those many years ago. Today, I listen to “The PBS News Hour” podcast every morning on my walks. I also listen to NPR’s “Fresh Air” and “The Treatment” to learn about movies, books, TV shows, and much more.

I’m so disappointed that the funding for these programs is being dropped by the government when they’re so valuable to the American public. 

I’m contributing money to PBS and NPR and I’ll offer you a free ebook copy of MAMLA if you show me your receipt that says you’ve also donated (send it to eric@ericmargerum.com). My ebook is in EPUB format and can be read on Kindle, Apple Books, Nook, and most ebook apps. 

Be sure to black out any credit card numbers, or other important information. I’ll also delete the receipt after I send you the ebook. 

Many PBS and NPR stations award thank-you gifts like tumblers, tote-bags, and hats. If you get one, please use it or wear it with pride and let people know that these programs are made possible by people like you.

TTFN

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DONATION SITES: 

www.pbs.org and www.npr.org

Ken Burns, documentary director of “The Civil War,” “Baseball” and “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” said on PBS: My biggest thing is, I travel around the system all the time. And I meet in big markets and small markets. And you begin to see the way in which, particularly in those small rural markets, the PBS station is really like the public library. It’s one of those important institutions. It may be the only place where people have access to local news, that the local station is going to the city council meeting.

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If you received this email because it was forwarded to you by a subscriber, welcome. You can subscribe as well by following the link on my website: ericmargerum.com. A free story awaits you there.