I have this feeling, this premonition, or perhaps it’s just a hope that 2016 is going to be a biggie. Already two of my books, Turnabout is Fatal Play and Decease and Desist, are available in paperback from Amazon. Within the first couple of months of this new year the […] Read more »
Let’s get the Breaking News out of the way: The entire McCall-Malone Mystery series is going to be available in print! Which is to say, existing in the real world: On actual paper, available to be bought in a bookstore, checked out of a library, held in your hand, given […] Read more »
So I take a day off from editing to write a blog post about editing. Hmm. I’ll probably regret it tomorrow, when I’m back to editing again, but here goes anyway…. Editing is work. I didn’t even mention that in title, because it’s kind of a given. But, really, it’s […] Read more »
STOP THE PRESSES! It’s a cliché of ‘40s newspaper movies and early TV shows, right? Nobody ever actually yelled “Stop the Presses!” Well, yes, I know of at least one time…. It was the summer of 1967 and I was home in Evansville, Indiana, between getting my degree in […] Read more »
My next birthday will be…old. Actuarially speaking, I could drop dead at any moment. Does that concern me? Are you nuts? Do you expect me to be all Courageous Blasé Guy and say it doesn’t? Of course it concerns me. I mean, we’re talking DEATH here. Finis. Nada more. The […] Read more »
I’m reading a book entitled Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Curry, which is exactly what it sounds like it would be. The revelation (to me) is that so many artists—painters, writers, composers—had almost unvarying routines around which they built their work. A remarkable number of them seem to […] Read more »
Most people know about plein air painting—painting in the open air, focusing on the natural surroundings. The Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River, Oregon, is one of the few—and maybe was the first—to sponsor plein air writing. There’s an annual event, the most recent just concluded, that features […] Read more »
I don’t know anything more exciting than starting a new book – nor anything more scary than finishing one. In the beginning there’s a wonderful new story forming in your imagination, growing and blossoming and spreading out like the most beautiful flower you’ve ever seen. (Yes, it’s that good.) There […] Read more »
So far I’ve written seven novels and published one—soon to be two. I have no agent and no publisher, not least because I’ve rarely sought either one and even then with little real determination. Which raises a couple of questions: Why am I writing? Why have I made so little […] Read more »