The trouble with birthday plans is that they can become an Event. You are meant to have a table, a guest list, a mood and photographs proving everyone had a wonderful time. This year, I skipped all that. One evening became a wine tasting and a reconnection with the woman who used to run San Miguel’s Food in Film Festival. We found ourselves remembering my presentation of It’s Not Always What It Seems on the stage at Bellas Artes thirteen years ago. A pleasant reminder that I’

For thirty years, I called San Francisco home. Then I discovered San Miguel de Allende. Returning now, amid talk of San Francisco’s “decline,” I found a city alive with motion, appetite, and possibility — and a reminder of why I once belonged here.

A simple storytelling exercise inspired by a skeleton Santa in San Miguel de Allende, and how noticing small details is where stories really begin.

I never leave home without my phone—aka my camera. And if I do, I invariably regret it. Today, I saw magenta and orange bougainvillea exploding over walls. An orchid tree in full bloom. A canopy of green so dense it turned the street into a tunnel of shade. It struck me—again—that writing has very little to do with sitting at a desk waiting for sentences to behave. It’s about noticing. Taking in detail visually, aurally, physically. Training the eye and ear long before my fin

I told the waiter Roberto at my local café that I’m using the place as a location for the script I'm writing, Café Eterno. “What’s it about?” he asked. I said it’s the central gathering point for a group of love stories — people yearning for love, falling in love, staying in love, falling out of love, circling back, missing each other by inches. The usual human chaos. Just with better coffee — and a touch of magical realism. He didn't blink, just said, “I owned a restaurant