Joe’s Blog

Essays, riffs, and updates on Blame the Devil, writing, and the worlds between.

A vintage typewriter sits alone on a bare, dark-stained wooden table, keys dulled and chipped, a single sheet of slightly crumpled paper rolled into the carriage with only a blacked-out rectangle where a title might be. A chipped ceramic mug with cold, untouched coffee rests nearby, leaving a circular stain on the wood. The room is dim, lit only by a narrow beam of late-night desk-lamp light, creating a hard pool of illumination surrounded by deep, inky shadow. Cigarette smoke–like wisps of dust hang in the air. The mood is solitary, brooding, and contemplative. Photographic realism, shot from a three-quarter angle with shallow depth of field, perfect to represent an author’s writing life without showing a person.

Posts

Subscribe

Get new posts, excerpts, and book news straight to you.

A stark, photographic close-up of a worn basketball lying just inside a bent chain-link fence gate, its orange surface scuffed to almost brown and dust clinging to its grooves. Behind it, a cracked asphalt court stretches out, with faint, faded lines and a rusted hoop hanging crookedly in the distance. Late-afternoon light, low and amber, cuts across the scene, throwing long, jagged shadows from the fence. The mood is gritty, tense, and slightly foreboding, evoking inner-city struggle and moral ambiguity. Shot from a low angle with the ball in the foreground and the empty court dissolving into soft bokeh, in cinematic, photographic realism, ideal for visually echoing the tone of a novel like “Blame the Devil.”