So after spending the afternoon making a logo with black construction paper, a pair of sharp scissors and a Perry the Platypus T-shirt to inspire me, I am finally ready to launch this blog. I know, the world was trembling in anticipation.<\/p>\n
I am a freelance writer, and those who already know me know that I was the longstanding film critic for the Northwest Herald in McHenry County, as well as other papers in the Shaw chain. Like any film critic to lose his gig, I have been searching for an outlet to foist my opinions on the weary\u00a0public. When I can\u2019t convince someone to pay me for an idea, I will post my thoughts on movies here. For free. You may now flood me with gratitude.<\/p>\n
But I can and will also use this space to share my thoughts on television, books and movies \u2014 hence \u201cCulture Spy.\u201d The name was chosen with\u00a0a twofold purpose. I will be using this blog to share my adventures in trying to get my teenage spy adventure, The Boy Who Knew Too Much<\/em>, published.<\/p>\n I will leak tidbits about the book, which I conceived as an blend of Ian Fleming and Robert Louis Stevenson, with more than a hint of Elleston Trevor, AKA Adam Hall, thrown in because the Quiller books were a huge influence on my tastes.<\/p>\n That\u2019s right,\u00a0I am trying to pitch a YA book inspired primarily by the works of two dead authors, one of them gone for more than 100 years and another gone for nearly 50. Am I a marketing genius or what? Got that finger on the pulse of youth culture, I do. Seriously, I think I wrote a great, fast-paced adventure story and the young readers probably won\u2019t suspect or care who inspired me. If contemporary readers enjoy my book as much as Charlie Higson\u2019s Young Bond novels, I will be mightily pleased.<\/p>\n As you may have guessed, I am a huge James Bond fan. So this blog likely will also become a repository of my thoughts on the world of 007. To make things clear up front, I love Roger Moore. Deal with it.<\/p>\n I hope you enjoy this blog. Hell, I hope I enjoy it. We\u2019ll see what happens. I\u2019ll think of a clever closing catchphrase later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So after spending the afternoon making a logo with black construction paper, a pair of sharp scissors and a Perry the Platypus T-shirt to inspire me, I am finally ready to launch this blog. I know, the world was trembling in anticipation. I am a freelance writer, and those who already know me know that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[349,22],"tags":[190,15,332,96,471,172,131],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-ramblings","category-the-boy-who-knew-too-much","tag-film","tag-james-bond","tag-pop-culture","tag-spy-novels","tag-the-boy-who-knew-too-much","tag-writing","tag-ya-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5foza-3T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}