A Brief Scene from “Sound Effect Infinity”

~ David Biddle ~ 1 Comment

My novel, Sound Effect Infinity, is available exclusively, for now, through Amazon as a hardcover edition. We were busy prepping it for print-on-demand publishing by Flat Branch Press over the first two months of 2026.

Dropping a brief passage below, and not from the early sections of the book either. Deep in. You won’t likely have enough context to fully get it, but hopefully your interest will be piqued. If you love music and wonder why it has such a powerful effect on people, you will likely enjoy this book.

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What About Emotion in Fiction?

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

I recently received an email telling me that someone “liked” a comment/post I made to a Substack last June. One wonderful thing about writing when you’re in your last quarter is that you often forget about some of the stuff you wrote–both on the fly and even stories and passages in novels you’ve been working (for far too long). The forgetting allows at times happy surprise and even pride.

Indeed, I’m quite happy, surprised, and feel pride in what I wrote below. If you go back in my website here, you’ll find numerous references to this issue over the past decade and a half.

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Still Sitting in a Circle

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

Weirdly, I found a Joy Harjo interview in a recent edition of AARP Bulletin. What a great discovery! Near the end of the piece, she says, “My sense is that when a child is born, mother’s milk emerges to feed the baby, but grandparents feed babies with stories.”

I got two things out of that statement. One is that, Yes! Indeed! I have been a grandparent now for almost 20 months. I plan to live another 20 years at least so that I can download all the stories I know about our grandson’s (and, hopefully his siblings and cousins) family. That role is particularly poignant for me because I am adopted and I am (as is he) a mixture of a half dozen family connections and a blend of

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How We Tell the Story Together

Notes on the Story of the Golden Country
~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

Rebecca Solnit writes comfortably in multiple veins as geographer, historian, environmentalist, memoirist, feminist, humanist, journalist, activist, even novelist. It’s pretty clear to me that she is one of our finest writers. In particular, her consistent artistic and poetic approach to essays and long-form narrarative is always surprisingly insightful and enlightening. And the way she writes, melding deeply personal perspective with a constant drive to pull back the curtain on the special ironies and contortions of American life, is the rarist form of reporting and commentary I know of – especially here in the 21st century (which, may I remind you, is now 25% in the can and still foaming).

Lately, Solnit’s been up on the battlements pushing hard to turn the tide in this current attempted

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Who’s In Charge Here, Soldier?

~ David Biddle ~ 1 Comment

One of my favorite scenes in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 movie, Apocalypse Now, is when Martin Sheen’s character, Captain Willard, has landed on a river bank in the dead of night during a major fire fight between US troops and their hidden North Vietnamese opponents. With young Lance (who is tripping on acid) in tow, he is trying to locate a commanding officer in the midst of all the chaos and violence and fear. Willard asks two guys hunkered down in a trench who their commanding officer is. One turns and says, “Ain’t you?”

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Wielding Hope and Dreams

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

Back in March, TW Magazine published commentary by me called “Which Way We Going Now?” What I wondered in that piece was how artists of all types were going to respond to changes forced on us by this new administration. 

The last time we had to deal with those same folks, the only significant artistic attempts to consistently address problems they were creating for the country seemed to come from comedians (and cable news talking heads having fun with various eye-rolling group exercise sessions). Now, however, we are living with a 2nd Term version of what some call the most incompetent, venal, and hostile administration in history. I promise not to go into detail about their shenanigans. Anything I attempt to describe explicitly from yesterday will be overshadowed by new bizarre travesties tomorrow. 

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Loving Day at 58 (Kinda…)

Rescinding dates for miscegenation laws in America
~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

June 12 is a special day. I’d guess most of my Facebook Friends are aware of Loving Day. Doesn’t take much to understand why. J.D. Vance might understand better than many of you. Same with Clarence Thomas. Also Barack Obama and yours truly (along with my enormous extended family). Actually, the list is virtually endless the world over even though most people don’t realize it.

But, a question: Have you found information on what this date is about in your local paper or any of your regular news sources? And how much detail did you get?

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Voices Gone Living On

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

I have learned as a reader who happens to be a writer that you never know when you’re going to bump into something new and interesting to influence your work. As examples, in the past week or so I’ve read three different types of document that inspired new thoughts and ideas for the novel I’m working on. One was a Substack memoir series; another a book review; the third a hybrid history-mystery-biography about a blackface minstrel star in the first half of the 20th century.

Many Men Watching

Martha Nichols’ Substack is called “Inside Reader” where she often writes about personal essay journalism, artificial intelligence, and all sorts of new shenanigans in the media world. I’ve known Martha for many years now and have immense respect for her knowledge about writing and her skill in particular as an astute essayist. (She also happens to have been my editor at Talking Writing magazine as well as The Harvard Business Review, among other things).

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Which Way We Going Now?

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On being an artist in this strange new world

I’ve been wondering about two things ever since the spring of 2016 when Donald Trump began winning primaries and getting all sorts of weird media attention. First off, were the Republican Party and its voters really willing to accept responsibility for the direction that guy wanted to push them? And, secondly, how much would the art world step up as a reaction to what Trump and his ilk seemed to want to do to our country? 

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