Musings & Tales

Mason sighs loud enough to make strangers step off the trail, but his family doesn't even turn around. He's thirteen, and he's missing hanging out with his friends and a chance to sit near Emma, all for a family hike to look at some stupid fall leaves. 📖 Read Stupid Leaves  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story...

A gang of burglars has broken into 71 Asheville-area homes this year. Shiny black fur, long claws, sharp teeth. I'm talking about our bears—the ones who treat trash day as an all-you-can-eat buffet and try car doors like teenage hoodlums. Living alongside them in Western North Carolina is mostly peaceful. Mostly. In thousands of encounters, only one went badly, and it was entirely my fault. 📖 Rea...

Most people see Blue Ridge fall color from the safety of parking lots and boardwalks. I challenge you to step off the pavement and embrace the wild, to trade honking horns and thumping music for gurgling creeks and hawks floating on thermals. 📖 Read Step Off the Pavement  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'...

Opening a new bottle of mouthwash shouldn't require divine intervention, but here we are. Under the cap waits a tamper-resistant foil seal with a pull tab so tiny a gnat couldn't land on it. Armed with tweezers, a flashlight, and a pair of uncooperative progressive glasses, I go to war. 📖 Read Foiled Again  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musing...

This isn't the Musing I planned to share this week. Something came up. Or, more exactly, went down. It rained. Not a gully-washer or a frog-strangler, but a gentle, all-evening, rocking-chair rain, the kind I'd been waiting for all summer. 📖 Read Rocking-Chair Rain  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spin...

Meta One: Facebook now charges me to post links for you. Two a month are free, eight will run me $600 a year, and unlimited costs a cool $6,000. What a bargain. Since Meta clearly needs the money, I have a few better fee ideas — starting with weather hypesters, vaguebookers, and anyone who hijacks a potato salad recipe. 📖 Read Links Cost Extra  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novel...

Rumors of timber wolves in the western North Carolina mountains persist. I confess I might have a little something to do with that. Let's say a running joke with my Siberian Huskies may have gotten slightly out of hand. 📖 Read Wolves In Our Mountains  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thoug...

Pumpkin spice has taken over everything — soap, shampoo, trash bags, even Spam. I go aisle by aisle through the invasion, from Starbucks to the canned meat section, wondering if anything is still sacred. 📖 Read Pumpkin Spice: Nothing is Sacred  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm...

On this 25th anniversary of 9/11, I skip the horror everyone else is retelling this week. Instead, I'm focusing my attention on the beacons of light — boaters racing toward Manhattan, a Newfoundland town throwing open its doors, and the strangers who simply showed up for each other when it mattered most. In today's show, I mention Boat Lift produced by Eyepop Productions and narrated by Tom Hanks....

September never gets its due. I trace how the month ended up with the wrong name — including a Roman emperor who tried to rename it after himself — before wandering through a quiet, unhurried Asheville morning that shows exactly why I love it. 📖 Read September's Quiet Promise  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a sto...

Binge-watching, by my definition, is a relative term — and this week's proof includes a pub argument in Australia, a decades-late appreciation for William H. Macy, and a deadline I might not beat. 📖 Read Shameless Slow Binge  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my hom...

One last battle. One overconfident commander. One summer about to end with a bang. Brent leads his depleted squad into a final assault on the enemy camp, certain of victory — right up until he isn't. 📖 Read Brothers in Arms  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home...

A wasp turned my hand into a swollen cantaloupe — and somehow, that's not even the worst part of this week's story. Steroid shots, one-handed typing, and a banana I dared myself to peel. 📖 Read Cantaloupe Hand  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Ashev...

The tornado was real. The photo of it wasn't. I pride myself on never falling for anything — but this one caught me. Being duped has me wondering if any of us can trust what we're shown anymore. 📖 Read Fake Photo. Real Disaster.  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my...

Before The Hitman had a single sentence, it had a rectangle. This week's Musing traces how a rough pencil sketch of a dive bar — drawn without knowing why — became the opening chapter of a novella, and what that says about how stories actually start. 📖 Read Hitman Doodles  on my website Click here to download your FREE excerpt of The Hitman  novella mentioned in this episode Hello, I'm D. K. Wall...

After our recent move, I discovered my government-assigned address means nothing to the post office, the DMV, or anyone else until each office decides, on its own schedule, to accept it. A Schrödinger's address, if you will, real or not depending on your perspective. Join me for a wry look at technology's broken promises, and what it takes to prove you live where you live. 📖 Read Schrödinger's Ad...

We all have them: the boxes that survive every move but never get unpacked. Tangled cords, foreign coins, a bag of business cards for people we've long since lost touch with. This week, a look inside the last ten boxes—and why we can't throw any of it away. 📖 Read The Last Ten Boxes  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it'...

A night light for safety seemed like such a bright idea. Unfortunately, I failed to account for a few things lurking in the shadows—starting with the shadows themselves. Here's how my genius home upgrade lasted exactly one night. 📖 Read Bright Idea. Too Bright.  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning...

The Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July, 1776. Except they didn't. That famous giant signature didn't happen until August. So why do we celebrate the Fourth? Join novelist D. K. Wall for a short, mostly-true musing untangling the gloriously messy story of how America picked the day to celebrate its birthday. Twelve minutes. Bring a sparkler. 📖 Read 250 Ye...

Everything about modern customer service is designed to help us—except the part where we actually get help. This week, I descended into the purgatory of automated phone systems and evil chatbots in my quest to reach a real person. The technology might have been built to serve us. Or, more likely, to save companies money. Either way, we can only endure the indignities to find the holy grail, the on...

Everything in this 1983 movie is obsolete—except the part that matters. This week I rewatched WarGames and took a nostalgic, slightly cranky tour through the dead technology inside it: arcade quarters, acoustic modems, floppy disks, payphones, and pull-tabs. It's the gadgets that time forgot, the prices we used to pay for a long-distance call, and the one thing in the movie that still hasn't aged...

Best friends, inseparable, until one day they weren't. Two boys in my neighborhood have gone their separate ways, and I don't know why. Or what will happen next. So I imagine endings for a story whose truth I'll never know. How would you write their next chapter? 📖 Read A Fading Friendship on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Wheth...

Time moves differently in a warm, still room. Liam counts the minutes to escape, certain it will last forever. The clock has other ideas. A short tale about the daydream we never quite outgrow—the one where freedom is always just a few minutes away. You might recognize the feeling. 📖 Read Tick Tock  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Ta...

I lost a point in college for writing "to boldly go." Turns out the grammar guides say otherwise, and I've been splitting infinitives ever since. Join me as I take a friendly swing at one of the most persistent grammar myths in the English language. Where did it come from? Why won't it die? And what do Chicago, Dreyer, and a certain starship captain have to say about it? Pull up a chair. This won'...

Who puts carpet in a Jeep Wrangler? This week, a mostly-true investigation into Siberian Huskies, dog hair magnets, and the great cargo-liner conspiracy. 📖 Read Who Puts Carpet in a Jeep?  on my website Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% tr...