Musings & Tales

The tornado was real. The photo of it wasn't. I pride myself on never falling for anything — but this one caught me. Being duped has me wondering if any of us can trust what we're shown anymore.

📖 Read Fake Photo. Real Disaster. on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Before The Hitman had a single sentence, it had a rectangle. This week's Musing traces how a rough pencil sketch of a dive bar — drawn without knowing why — became the opening chapter of a novella, and what that says about how stories actually start.

📖 Read Hitman Doodles on my website

Click here to download your FREE excerpt of The Hitman novella mentioned in this episode

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

After our recent move, I discovered my government-assigned address means nothing to the post office, the DMV, or anyone else until each office decides, on its own schedule, to accept it. A Schrödinger's address, if you will, real or not depending on your perspective.

Join me for a wry look at technology's broken promises, and what it takes to prove you live where you live.

📖 Read Schrödinger's Address on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

We all have them: the boxes that survive every move but never get unpacked. Tangled cords, foreign coins, a bag of business cards for people we've long since lost touch with. This week, a look inside the last ten boxes—and why we can't throw any of it away.

📖 Read The Last Ten Boxes on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

A night light for safety seemed like such a bright idea. Unfortunately, I failed to account for a few things lurking in the shadows—starting with the shadows themselves. Here's how my genius home upgrade lasted exactly one night.

📖 Read Bright Idea. Too Bright. on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

The Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July, 1776. Except they didn't. That famous giant signature didn't happen until August. So why do we celebrate the Fourth?

Join novelist D. K. Wall for a short, mostly-true musing untangling the gloriously messy story of how America picked the day to celebrate its birthday.

Twelve minutes. Bring a sparkler.

📖 Read 250 Years Ago... More or Less on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Everything about modern customer service is designed to help us—except the part where we actually get help. This week, I descended into the purgatory of automated phone systems and evil chatbots in my quest to reach a real person. The technology might have been built to serve us. Or, more likely, to save companies money. Either way, we can only endure the indignities to find the holy grail, the one thing machines can't replace.

📖 Read Press One for Purgatory on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Everything in this 1983 movie is obsolete—except the part that matters. This week I rewatched WarGames and took a nostalgic, slightly cranky tour through the dead technology inside it: arcade quarters, acoustic modems, floppy disks, payphones, and pull-tabs. It's the gadgets that time forgot, the prices we used to pay for a long-distance call, and the one thing in the movie that still hasn't aged a day.

📖 Read Shall We Play a Game? on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Best friends, inseparable, until one day they weren't. Two boys in my neighborhood have gone their separate ways, and I don't know why. Or what will happen next. So I imagine endings for a story whose truth I'll never know. How would you write their next chapter?

📖 Read A Fading Friendship on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!

Time moves differently in a warm, still room. Liam counts the minutes to escape, certain it will last forever. The clock has other ideas.

A short tale about the daydream we never quite outgrow—the one where freedom is always just a few minutes away. You might recognize the feeling.

📖 Read Tick Tock on my website

Hello, I'm D. K. Wall, author of novels and short stories. Welcome to Musings and Tales. Whether it's a story I'm spinning or a thought I'm sharing from my home here in Asheville, it's all 100% true... except for the parts I make up.

📚Visit my website to discover more about my novels and short stories.

🎧 Subscribe to Musings and Tales on your favorite podcast app

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Happy Reading!