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Around the House: Should You Move Now, or Stay Put?
The passing of time makes many things more pressing, and that includes where we want to spend most, if not the rest, of our lives.
It’s almost October – again! Every month seems like it’s come back around faster and faster as the years pass. Holidays, too. Didn’t we just take the Christmas tree down?
The passing of time makes many things more pressing, and that includes where we want to spend most, if not the rest, of our lives. We live in a small house in the woods in rural New Jersey, not far from Lambertville and New Hope (PA), but six miles from a town. We’ve talked for several years about moving to a place where we could walk to a coffee shop, and have next door neighbors, and see people walking into town. More importanntly, it’s a small house on 26 acres of wooded land. It was a one-room house when it was built long ago, and it’s just not good for two aging men. Rickety stairs to the basement where the laundry machine is. One bedroom, with a makeshift guest room in the A-frame attic. Two cats. No writing room for me!
I keep saying now is the time to get serious about moving. I’ll be 68 in October, and I know I’ll have no desire to move when I’m 80. I also want to find a new house while we’re still at an age to really enjoy it. Decorating. Gardening. Make it special. And enjoying it for more than a few years before that whole assisted-living thing becomes a consideration.
And I think the time has come. Hopefully a year from now we’ll either be moved, or in the proccess of moving. So what are the things to consider as so many of us find ourselves at this crossroads?
When is the right time?
There’s no magic birthday. But there are signs. The stairs that used to be nothing are now something. The yard that was a pleasure is now a chore list. The house has rooms nobody goes into except to dust them (or not enough rooms at all). Maybe you’ve outgrown the place, or the neighborhood has changed around you, and home doesn’t feel like home anymore.
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Devil’s Wood Audiobook Now on the Fearsome Fiction Podcast Two Chapters at a Time (1 and 2)
Follow author Mark McNease deep into the Devil’s Wood.
An ancient people. A tree that has stood seemingly forever. And a walking stick that must possess anyone who possesses it.
Two chapters at a time, only on the Fearsome Fiction podcast. You can purchase the entire audiobook on Spotify and select online retailers.
Enter the Devil’s Wood. But be warned: you may never leave.
And now… fasten your headphones, and tell someone your last known location. The Devil’s Wood dotcom.
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From the Book Bin: Douglas Stuart’s Quitely Devastating ‘John of John’
Book Review: John of John by Douglas Stuart
A story about fathers and sons, faith and shame, and the long silences that can pass for peace.
Douglas Stuart’s first two novels lived in the tenements of 1980s Glasgow. His third takes the ferry west, to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides in the late 1990s. It’s a quieter book than Shuggie Bain or Young Mungo, and in many ways a braver one.
Cal Macleod is 22, fresh out of art college in Edinburgh, and broke. Twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays, he waits at a phone box for his father to call from Harris and sing the day’s Gaelic psalm, expecting Cal to sing it back. They don’t talk much. John mentions that Cal’s grandmother hasn’t been well; Cal keeps quiet about the men he’s sleeping with.
So Cal goes home to the croft where John raises sheep and weaves tweed. His grandmother, Ella—a Glaswegian who refuses to speak Gaelic and holds on to her profanity-laced English—turns out to be fairly vigorous, and the summons serves another purpose. On the crossing, an elderly passenger asks Cal who he belongs to, and he recites his lineage: “John of John of Ian of Ian the Breabadair.” Breabadair means weaver. On this island, you are who your father was.
The friction arrives on schedule. John is a deacon in a church that still shames backsliders in public and chains up the swings on the Sabbath. Cal has dyed his long hair, wears torn jeans, and has no interest in joining the elect in the front pews. John raises his hand to him. Cal answers a “Men Seeking Men” ad in the newspaper.
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COMING SOON: The Return of LGBTSr
After an extended break, I’ll be brining back LGBTSr better and sharper than ever. I haven’t decided what content you’ll be getting, but it will be great. So stay tuned, be patient, and love life. – Mark -
True Crime Tuesday – A Fearsome Fiction Feature: Kouri Richins and the Moscow Mule Murder
True Crime Tuesday – A Fearsome Fiction Feature: Kouri Richins and the Moscow Mule Murder
Narration provided by WondervoxShe killed her husband with a fentanyl-laced Moscow Mule — then wrote a children’s book about grief. On May 13, 2026, the same day that would have been Eric Richins’ 44th birthday, a Utah judge sentenced Kouri Richins to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In this episode of True Crime Tuesdays, Mark McNease walks you through one of the most chilling cases in recent memory — a tale of debt, deception, a secret affair, and a calculated murder hiding in plain sight behind the cover of a children’s book. From the first failed attempt on Valentine’s Day to the fatal Moscow Mule, from the internet searches about lethal doses to the jury that deliberated less than three hours — this is a story that is almost too dark to be believed.
True Crime Tuesdays is a Fearsome Fiction feature. New episodes every Tuesday.
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New Your Write Path Promotional Video
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LGBT Senior’s Tech Talk: Streaming TV Made Simple
Mark McNease/Editor
We cut the cord several years ago after holding onto cable out of a common fear that giving it up would bring calamity. But as the rates kept rising year after year, and we lost everything that had been recorded on the cable’s DVR when the box went bad, we said enough and made the switch to streaming.
We love it! Our main source is YouTubeTV, which has as many channels as cable did, and can record hundreds of hours of TV shows we don’t watch live. (Recording also means we can speed through any commercials.) And with streaming, it’s all connected to your account and not a cable box. Instead if having to pay extra for a second box in the bedroom, or even a third, all you need is a TV, WiFi, and an account with any of the streaming services.
Not only does this mean our TV essentially goes with us anywhere, and can be streamed on any device, it also means I can travel with my Amazon Fire stick, plug it into a hotel room’s TV, and see everything we’d see at home. On that note, too, I recently discovered Hampton Inns are now making streaming the default, either through in-house apps or with the ability to connect your own device. Smart move! Hotels don’t have to pay a cable fee for their room TVs now, they just need streaming apps. It’s about time!
So, if you’ve cut the cord on cable, or you’re thinking about it, welcome to the wonderful, sometimes bewildering world of streaming television. There’s never been more to watch. There’s also never been more ways to accidentally spend $80 a month on services you forgot you signed up for, so let’s fix that.
What Is Streaming, Exactly?
Streaming means watching TV shows, movies, and video content over the internet instead of through a cable or satellite provider. No dish, no cable box, no appointment window between noon and four. You watch what you want, when you want, on your TV, tablet, phone, or computer. The tradeoff is that instead of one big cable bill, you’re now managing several smaller subscriptions — and that’s where things can quietly get out of hand.
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New Workshop Scheduled: A Thematic Journaling Workshop for Gay Men 60+ (June 24)
A Thematic Journaling Workshop for Gay Men 60+
Here’s something people don’t often mention about getting older: the more life we’ve lived, the more interesting we become.
The places we’ve lived, the people we’ve loved, the versions of yourselves we’ve tried on and kept or discarded. It’s all there in the tapestry of our lives.
This journaling workshop is a place for rediscovery through journaling. No experience required, no literary ambitions necessary. Just a willingness to follow some simple good prompt, and see what comes out when we explore ourselves.
We’ll write together, share if we feel like it, and leave with more pages than we arrived with.
What to expect: A warm, low-pressure Zoom session with short writing exercises, optional sharing, and a take-home prompt to keep the momentum going.
Who it’s for: Gay men 60 and older — whether you’ve never kept a journal or you used to and stopped.
Led by Mark McNease, certified Guided Autobiography Instructor and author of fifteen novels, who believes everyone in the room has a story worth writing.
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LGBT Senior’s Podcast Pick: UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton – How America’s Foster System Is Failing Trans Kids (YouTube)
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Mark McNease’s Fearsome Fiction Special Edition: Short Story ‘Jawbone’ from 5 of a Kind
Today in this special feature of the Fearsome Fiction Podcast we’re offering another short story from Mark McNease’s collection, ‘Five of a Kind.’
Jawbone tells the story of young Richard who was eighteen years old when a head-on collision on a snowy Indiana road took the lower half of his face. He survived — and that, in many ways, was the cruelest part.
We Richard Krump across the decades after his accident: the surgeries that promised normalcy and delivered nothing, the friends who never showed up to his homecoming party, the little girl in a drugstore who gave him his name, and the slow, steady retreat of everyone he ever loved — until only his books, his silence, and finally his paintings remained.
A haunting, deeply human story about disfigurement, isolation, and the particular cruelty of surviving intact on the inside while the world refuses to see past the outside. Jawbone begins where a young man’s life as he knew it ends.
