A friend of mine, Dan Kraus, emailed me a link to his blog that includes some old films he made when he was growing up in Iowa. Talented guy. Met him in Wilmington, NC, where he wrote movie reviews for a local publication and wrote and directed the indie film, “Ball of Wax.”

Dan recently released his first novel, “Monster Variations,” a teen-aged boys coming-of-age story complete with murders and missing limbs.

His advice to me for film school: Hey, I read you’re off to film school. Please make things with lots of explosions and, ideally, fighting robots.