Announcement… Thoughts on First Drafts 22 Mar 2023 I'm one of three writers interviewed on this "Words to Write By" podcast series this week (the others being Delta James and M. J. Brunnabend), and the subject being first…
Author post Clause and Effect 11 Dec 201711 Dec 2017 Do you love subordinate clauses? I know I do. And how about assonance and alliteration, rhythm and rhyme? Let's face it: they can be as tasty as chocolate. But would…
Author post Getting Over Yourself: Advice for Novelists 17 Sep 201720 Oct 2017 There are many ways to become a good writer, but one of the best ways to become a great one–besides giving yourself a thorough grounding in the mechanics of language–is…
Author post Five Essentials of Novel-Writing for Self-Published Authors 22 Aug 201722 Aug 2017 I scribed this for A Writer's Path, where it will appear sometime in the next month. Editor Ryan Lanz graciously suggested I feel free to publish it here first. It’s…
Author post Novels and Nazis 14 Aug 201715 Aug 2017 Is there a place for novels and novelists when Nazis march the streets of a tarnishing America, and gather in the squares of Europe, while clans face off in the…
Author post No Regrets 8 Aug 201710 Aug 2017 Long ago (but not far away), back at the dawn of time, I made a decision for which I've often been mocked and derided over the concatenated decades since: I…
Announcement… 85,021 6 Aug 20178 Aug 2017 The third novel now stands at 85,021 words. This is close to what I'd envisioned as its final bulk, and in fact the first draft is close to finished. Just…
Author post Cruel Graces 11 Jul 201730 Sep 2017 The grace of a cat is rooted in cruelty. Not just the cruelty of the kill itself, which, if you abstract it from the pain it imposes, is beautiful as…