blog.jtr.name: jtr's blog

jtr (John Truscott Reese) writes personal essays (and slide decks) about travel, writing, whisky, and other pleasures. Subscribe by email for new posts.

• 
  2026-01-18

  Thirty Duck-sized Horses: a month of flash fiction

  I’d just written a Horse-sized Duck…

• 
  2024-07-26

  I finished the first draft of my novel

  I’ve been working on a novel since 2002, writing an installment every November through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, which I…

• 
  2023-08-04

  I Paid to Shovel Barley

  A week of Whisky School at Springbank Distillery.

• 
  2023-08-04

  Appendix: Life of a Dram

  This appendix is an overview of the whisky process from beginning to end. It’s intended to give context to my blog post about my week in…

• 
  2023-04-18

  Raisedbywolves von Wolflike

  There is a character in the Harry Potter novels named Remus Lupin, a name so eye-rollingly obvious that it ruined a major plot point for…

• 
  2021-08-30

  Pumpkin Spice does not contain pumpkin

  An issue for our times

• 
  2020-11-14

  jtr’s Novel Writing vacation

• 
  2020-02-09

  Throwing the Lantern

  Dubrovnik, November 3 through 23, 2019

• 
  2020-01-12

  How to Understand Greatest Gen Khan II: Star Trek III

  For Fans of Mulan and Pacific Rim

• 
  2016-12-03

  To tread a decaying Paris under his sandalled feet

  I work at Google, as a Site Reliability Engineer, and I love it. We’re doing something new, difficult, fascinating — creating a positive…

• 
  2015-05-23

  Two Months into my London Mission