Calvin Coolidge served as the 30th President of the United States from August 2, 1923 through March 4, 1929. He was notably the only president to share a birthday with America, having been born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, on July 4, 1872. Coolidge’s presidency coincided with the 150th anniversary of American...

Introduction Two days ago, I announced my plan to review a significant number of short visual novels submitted to the minimalist O2A2 2026 – Only One of Any Asset Visual Novel Jam (“O2A2”) (see my article about my own submission) and proceeded to review 11 entries. Because I introduced the project there, I will skip...

Introduction I recently published an article about creating and publishing a new visual novel in ONScripter-EN titled Under the Alien Sky from beginning-to-end from July 17-19. I created that piece within the restraints of two Itch.io game submission jams. While the tight July 17-19 time limit came from Kenney Jam...

Limerence is a freeware original English-language visual novel by Zalor, a solo independent visual novel writer/developer and commentator. It is written in Ren’Py and was first published on March 5, 2026. Zalor describes it in a brief, poetic introduction on its online home, Itch.io: This is a story of love not...

Back in January, I released my first original visual novel, Little White Lies, in conjunction with Victor V. Gurbo. In this post, I announce my second visual novel, Under the Alien Sky, which you can download for free from Itch.io (https://itch.io/naferrell/under-the-alien-sky/). Early scene from Under the Alien...

On May 3, 2026, I spent the afternoon walking around the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook with a friend. That walk led to my May 25, 2026 report on seeing a large warehouse fire in Belleville, New Jersey, from across the river. I took the photo of smoke rising from the Garden State that I used in my reportage at...

On July 4, 2026, the United States celebrated its 250th anniversary, also known as the semiquincentennial (see Dictionary.com for an explanation of the nomenclature). In so doing, the United States continued its tradition of holding national celebrations every 50 years, beginning with the July 4, 1826 American...

Last Christmas, I published a short article titled My Gingerbread Man Soap Dispenser, which was, as the name suggests, about my gingerbread man soap dispenser. I had purchased him at a local discount store called Lot Less on December 20, 2025, mostly for aesthetic purposes (I recall it was about $3 to $3.50, but I...

America at 250, America at 50 On July 4, 2026, the United States will celebrate a special Independence Day marking the 250th anniversary of America’s independence on July 4, 1776. While much attention will be on America’s 250th, this article will focus on the 200th anniversary of America’s 50th anniversary of its...

Beginning with fall 2025, I started establishing seasonal themes at The New Leaf Journal. My fall 2025 and winter and spring 2026 themes were a bit catch-all and arguably under-utilized. But that changes with summer 2026, because I have settled on a clear and distinct topical theme that will not go under-utilized....

I recently read an article by Adriane Quinlan for Grub Street titled Dark, Dense, and Disappearing How pumpernickel bagels became an endangered species. The headline concerned me. I am a fan of the pumpernickel bagel. While I like most non-everything bagels (everything tend to be too salty for my taste),...

[P]introduction Despite having “heard” about Pinterest in the past, it was not until 2020 that I came to (sort of) understand what it was. I created a Pinterest account for The New Leaf Journal in 2020 because our SEO plugin at the time, Yoast SEO, offered an admin menu option for configuring Pinterest Webmaster...