www.jeffreyrich.me
Writing to make you think, feel, and wonder.
Fiction with science and humor, stories with great characters and surprising plots
Stories, like good cocktails, should leave you shaken or stirred. A shot of science mixed with compelling characters and a plot that intrigues and surprises makes for an intoxicating read. I am intrigued by things that might just be possible while straddling the fence of outrageous. A raw fact can be polished to a gem of a story.
In my medical advertising career I learned how to develop concepts, the underlying energy at the core of ads and brand identities. Sometimes these were expressed as words, sometimes as graphics, these essential truths of a product, service, customer or company yield infinitely varied ideas and messages. It is a form of alchemy, crafting ideas into stories just at the periphery of our capabilities, that excites me as a writer. After twenty years of writing about a myriad of topics in science and medicine, I have grown to enjoy interpreting and extracting insights from arcane, emerging or obtuse masses of information.
As I embark on a publishing journey for my stories and books, I invite you to get to know me and read, enjoy (or not) some of my writings by visiting The Dump, my blog with publications, experiences and adventures, both business and personal. All true, all amusing.
Just twenty-six letters
comprise every piece of writing in the English language, endlessly rearranged to make us love, hate, laugh, cry, ache, and learn. Exploring the infinite possibilities of the written word is my passion.
Short stories that have affected me as a writer include:
Maupassant’s Bolle de Suif is a masterpiece on hypocrisy
Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor “ is a short story within his epic Brothers Karamazov, and nails the problem with organized religion like no other
Salinger’s Teddy resonated long after I finished reading
Tis all a chequer-board
Back in the 1980’s I wrote an article about a physician who had the fourth largest chess set collection in the world, and in researching it, caught the bug. My wife and I gathered and displayed about fifty sets over the years, minor leagues among serious collectors, but fun to look at nonetheless. More than mere game pieces, chessmen can be miniature sculptures depicting clashes of armies, ideas, and opposing forces. I’m an awful chess player, but great admirer of clever, novel, and artistic sets. I can’t paint, either, but love art. Likewise, I am not a scientist, but I am intrigued by scientific novelties and insights, and cannot help wondering “What if….” Click the button below to read my homage to the doctor and his wife who acquired and eventually merged their fourth largest chess set collection with the second largest, to become the emeritus and greatest of all chess set collectors.