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Why a newsletter, you ask? Don’t I get enough crap in my Inbox?

The answer to the latter is probably ‘yes’. But here I am anyway, and there’s a good reason for that. I have been blogging more or less regularly since the early part of the millennium. I’ve maintained my blog, bobgreenberger.com, and have evolved it to a point where it’s a fine place to read my thoughts, see my books, and engage.

The problem has been that despite my posting “Over at the blog…” across my social media accounts, (for a full listing see here), my stats can usually be counted on both hands and feet. That means I am not reaching everyone I would like to, especially as I try and grow the readership for the words I wrote and books I produce.

Which brings us to the author newsletter, a way that many authors I know or read employ. Consider this an experiment and I apologize for the slight delay in launching.

For those who do not read the blog with any regularity, I tend to wax on regarding the projects I am working on or events I have attended. I rarely touch on politics but I do talk about the books I am reading and media I am consuming. And every now and then, I may rail about the New York Mets.

I would like to use this space as a way to connect with you: friends, family, fans. I hope we can chat, allow me to answer questions you may have, and build a bit of a community here.

I grew up a New York Mets fan thanks to my father losing his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers when they headed west. Once the Mets opened for business, he was a follower. I recall watching games with him on WOR in New York, broadcasts on radio and television anchored by the fashion-challenged Lindsey Nelson, former baseball great Ralph Kiner, and avuncular Bob Murphy.

On several consecutive summers, Dad would take me and some friends to Shea Stadium for Old Timers Day, which was near enough to my July birthday to make it a fun birthday outing. I once spied former Dodger Roy Campanella being wheeled through the parking lot just prior to an appearance.

When I discovered my girlfriend Deb was also a Mets fan, we attended games and watched together from home. When we married and had Kate and Robbie, both grew up fans. So yeah, we bleed blue and orange.

However, baseball can be cruel to diehard fans. Teams that hold promise disappoint you time and again. We fall in love with players and pray they perform well but then whiff when it counts the most. The Mets have caused much heartache and grief for the family.

So, it was with very mixed emotions that I watched the team be disassembled and rebuilt during the winter. However, I understood that sometimes it needs doing. It certainly had to be done when I was editing Doom Patrol and had lost my artist and the sales were nosediving. I had to fire my friend Paul Kupperberg, whose passion project this was, and replace the entire creative team in order to fulfill my job of producing a profitable title. I think I succeeded with Grant Morrison and Richard Case arriving to try a different approach.

I will miss Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil, Brandon Nimmo, Starling Marte, and Edwin Diaz, but totally understand why they needed to go. For three seasons, this core just didn’t get the job done. You can check out all the sliced and diced stats you want elsewhere, but they didn’t win owner Steve Cohen a Worlds Series championship. Too often the team didn’t hit in the clutch and were hot or cold rather than be consistent.

The new lineup arrived on Thursday and despite giving up seven runs, they performed. They waited out the pitchers, going deep into the count, and capitalized on misplays in the field. The rookie and other newcomers all debuted well and offered a glimpse of the fresh potential.

As I write this, the team is 3-1 and off to a solid start so I am encouraged.

We recently completed watching The Night Manager season two and found it a little hard to reconnect with it after nine years. However, it did a clever job of intertwining the various threads of a plot to stage a coup in Colombia, once again pitting our hero Tom Hiddleston against Hugh Lawrie. But, it was more than that, as the themes of loyalty and family permeates many of the characetrs, especially Laurie’s Richard Roper. Much of the fun is in the final two installments when Hiddleston and Laurie actually face one another in person. It has a downbeat ending, as one would expect, when adapting a John Le Carre novel.

Like most of America, we’ve been enthralled by The Pitt, although Hour 12 got preachy at times. Still, the pace and intensity is a delight as are the doctors and nurses enduring a hot July 4th weekend.

We continue to cycle our way through other series such as the still-fun The Rookie, Grey’s Anatomy, Matlock, Family Law, and Bosch Legacy (S2).

We also liked Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man a feature-length wrapup to Steven DeKnight’s marvelous crime series. It was intense and tied things up nicely, but there were missed character moements that would have been prefered to some of the Nazi stuff.

Yesterday, Deb and I watched Project Hail Mary and I had read the novel btu she has yet to. Both of us liked it a lot. I appreciate the difficulty in adapting a mostly insular, science-based story to the big screen, and think Drew Goddard’s script did a superb job. Yes, Ryan Gosliong was a solid choice for the lead and he did an excellent job working with a puppet alien and made it work. This is well recommended.

On my own, I thought Daredevil: Born Again opened up its second season with a strong outing. I have been less enthrtalled as I reach the halfway mark of Monarch season one and remain somewhat interested in Evil now that I have reached season two.

My community has started a book club and even though I will be teaching college when they discuss the first book, I still read Ariel Lawhon’s The Forzen River, which I found myself enjoying quite a bit. It’s more or less a murder msytery set in 1789 Maine, after the Consitution was ratified but before the Bill of Rights. It’s a nice look at what daily life must have been like back then and much of it is based on real people and incidents.

I am listening to The Last Kings of Hollywood, about George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorcese, which I am enjoying. Similarly, I am liking Christopher Moore’s Anima Rising, someone new for me.

www.bobgreenberger.com for all my books and appearances.

My next appearance will be at Shore Leave 46 in Lancaster, PA, July 10-12.

My next releases are Cases by Candlelight Vol. 5 and Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2026.