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About Tom Bentley

Tom Bentley is a novelist, essayist, and business and travel writer. (He does not play banjo.) He's published hundreds of freelance pieces in newspapers, magazines, and online. He is the author of three novels, a collection of short stories, and a how-to book on finding and cultivating your writing voice. His singing is known to frighten the horses. See his lurid website confessions at tombentley.com.

Recent Posts by this author:

  • Missing Some Memories? I Might Have Stolen Them
  • Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me
  • Your Characters’ Flaws Are Story Draws
  • Bringing Shape and Color to a Book Cover’s Blank Canvas
  • Writers: Fact to Fiction? Not So Fast
  • Writing to the Beat of the Vulnerable Heart
  • Writing Collaborations (or, Whose Hands Are on Those Pencils?)
  • Characters Can Never Remove Their Tattoos (or Can They?)
  • Shatter Your Characters: Shame Them, Guilt Them
  • Sordid Confessions: Two Lovers (and I Love Them Just the Same)
  • The Heartfelt, Unpublishable, Captivating, Shallow, Sound, Abandoned, Reclaimed, Worthless, Most Excellent Potential Novel
  • A Writer’s Eyes Are Always Open

    • Missing Some Memories? I Might Have Stolen Them

    By 25 Comments

    Remember when you were in high school and you told your mom you were going to Susie Straightlace’s house to study but you really went to Rachel Riskwhisker’s rager where you drank so much Grape Crush and vodka you had to crawl home with one eye shut and you peeked in your living room window to see if your mom was still up and you saw that she had removed her glowing, rutabaga-shaped brain from its cranial case and was recharging it with what you had once thought was a giant electric razor and you realized that she was an alien overlord?

    I don’t, because that’s your memory, not mine. But gollyjeepers, I’ve got some doozies. (To be clear though, my mom was an angel.) Me, I had a tidy little enterprise in my high school years and beyond: professional shoplifter. I say “professional” because I ascended the ladder of five-finger skills through enterprise and gall, and because I sold the goods I lifted to high school acquaintances. Satan whispered in my ear a lot those days.

    Well, I sold some of the goods–the significant amounts of liquor I stole were consumed by me and my cronies. Many of those were quaffed in the name of science, since items like blueberry schnapps and MD (Mad Dog) 20-20 “wine” weren’t actually meant to be ingested—by humans at least. And I was the guy who did steal Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book when it came out—Abbie, you asked for it.

    Confessional memoirs have possibly peaked in popularity, but I’m always late to the party, so I recently wrote one. I have written essays over time about the impossibly poor judgment I had as a lad, but I hadn’t thought about writing a memoir until I was editing one for a client, hers being a 140,000-word composition about her years as a marketing executive in the senior care industry.

    Part cautionary tale, part horror story about the dark side of aging, part song of friendship, part instructional on best and more humane industry practices, hers is a funny, sad, sharp and scary volume. Working with her on it made me realize that I could shape my misdeeds into a book, and at the least, terrify the parents of high schoolers who think their charges are studying at Susie’s. [Read more…]

    Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me

    By 38 Comments

    “We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying ... literature has come out of it.” —Marilynne Robinson Trigger warning: several bummers ahead. Yes, your groaning is my groaning, and though this post will dig some dark coal, there is a writing diamond or two herein as well. And before we mention that effing virus, a little rehash: Six months ago, my cat Malibu disappeared. I was deeply bonded to her, time and again laughed at her antics, worried when she was sick, looked to … [Read more...]

    Your Characters’ Flaws Are Story Draws

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    When I was 11, frustrated and sugar-crazed, I tried to open a Coke can with a steak knife. I’d broken the can’s pull-tab ring and shrewdly thought that I could plunge the knife through the aluminum seal. Instead, I plunged it fully through that flying-squirrel skin web between my thumb and forefinger. To this day, I can rub the little ball of scar tissue on that skin, and reflect on flawed decision-making. In my mid-twenties, I was going to heat up a tortilla on an iron skillet. Having heated … [Read more...]

    Bringing Shape and Color to a Book Cover’s Blank Canvas

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    Book covers are influential. When I saw Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book in the store, I stole it immediately. (Abbie, thank you for not titling your book Eat Your Poop.) I've been motivated and moved by cover artistry many times, so much so I’ve paid for books about which I knew little other than their cover’s invitation. There are seemingly endless combinations of illustration, typography, geometry and color that simply click that “yes!” in our heads—the cover is something felt, it paints an … [Read more...]

    Writers: Fact to Fiction? Not So Fast

    By

    Some light years ago, I was living with my best friend in a small apartment in Southern California, on my own for the first time. It was our first New Year’s Eve together as that eager, barely tolerable species: raffish apartment-dweller-type dudes, barely out of high school. We were going to celebrate that self-congratulatory state of being with a New Year’s party. That evening we had a respectable turnout of our friends, acquaintances, and other welfare cheats of note, and had settled in to … [Read more...]

    Writing to the Beat of the Vulnerable Heart

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      I'm editing a biography of an accomplished pediatric heart surgeon. The author had interview access to many of the parents of the children with damaged hearts, and he was also allowed to be in the operating room when sometimes superhuman attempts were made to repair that damage. What struck me (and terrified me too) was how with a factual narrative accounting of the bleak medical outlook for these tiny patients and the sophisticated efforts to save them, the book and its stories … [Read more...]

    Writing Collaborations (or, Whose Hands Are on Those Pencils?)

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    Sometime in 2013, I received this message from a friend: Hey Tom: In other news, an old college friend posted a phrase on Facebook, describing a large icicle that is quite simply a magnificent book title: “Swirled all the way to the shrub” I can’t let it go. Here’s a crazy idea: Wanna write a short story together, with that title as the jumping-off point? I don’t have a lot of time these days, so I’m not proposing anything at breakneck speed. Could be a hoot though. “Swirled All the … [Read more...]

    Characters Can Never Remove Their Tattoos (or Can They?)

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    In high school, I had a close-knit group of friends, many of whom remain good friends today. Except for one, a person with whom I was remarkably tight for an intense period, and then it all fell away. (Let’s call him X, because X is a fine name for something buried, though “treasure” doesn’t come to mind.) X probably had the most ranging intelligence of all my friends, the quickest wit and certainly the most ingenuity: he was the kind of a guy who would look at a dead radio, and in five minutes … [Read more...]

    Shatter Your Characters: Shame Them, Guilt Them

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    My cat killed a hummingbird a few days ago. She brought it in, as cats will do, proud, thrilled with the hunt, mad with animality. If you have a cat that goes outdoors, you know the behavior: your pet’s standard personality is turned up ten notches to a twitching, eyes-afire clench of sinew and nerves. In my cat’s case, she’s a poor birder, for which I give thanks. In years, I’ve only found evidence of one slain bird in our yard. She’s pleased to display the occasional vole or even a rat from … [Read more...]

    Sordid Confessions: Two Lovers (and I Love Them Just the Same)

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    virtualwayfarer via Compfight cc Two lovers, oh yeah. You wouldn’t think it from my bio photo, but I’m a major player. (I can’t say “playa” because I’m only allowed to use the Suburban Dictionary.) Two lovers, dig, and—with apologies to Mary Wells—I ain’t ashamed. But dang if I’m not flummoxed, because even sharing my keyboard between the two is daunting. What I’d like to discuss is a surfeit of joy: working on two novels at once. (Note: the term “joy” in this instance is synonymous with … [Read more...]

    The Heartfelt, Unpublishable, Captivating, Shallow, Sound, Abandoned, Reclaimed, Worthless, Most Excellent Potential Novel

    By

    Eight years ago I sat down to write a novel, because my knees are lousy, so I couldn’t do it standing. The book’s setting is San Francisco, and its inciting incident is the earthquake of 1989, which flings together—in often unseemly ways—three characters who otherwise would have remained on the periphery of each others’ lives. The work proceeded at my standard brisk pace: I started it, stopped, muddled about, felt guilty it wasn’t going anywhere, took it up again, outlined and pretended that was … [Read more...]

    A Writer’s Eyes Are Always Open

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    Writers are made, not born. Writers are born, not made. Writers are born without maids. Whichever nature/nurture boxing glove you decide to swing in that battle, I hold that there are some distinct methods to cultivate a writer’s eye, and that those cultivations can result in sweet writerly fruits. (Please excuse that the last sentence mixed its metaphors with a waffle iron rather than a whisk.) Our lovely kitty image above is figuratively indicative of my intent: as a writer, you must always … [Read more...]