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 The Beginning of the End 10 Sep 201710 Sep 2017 I came to the last word of the first draft of my third novel yesterday morning. This marks, of course, not the end of the hard work, but only the…
Announcement… To the Finish Line! 4 Sep 20174 Sep 2017 That's Frank's rat rod in the picture above. Of course he doesn't actually race it, but it's as close as I could get to a racing image without indulging in…
Author post Outside the Lines 31 Aug 20172 Sep 2017 It's popular these days to advise folks that they ought to "color outside the lines," though submitting to that counsel often leads to feeble displays of chaos. Sometimes, though, carefully…
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…
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… Recursions, Part 5: Flannery O’Connor’s “Mystery and Manner” 30 Jul 201730 Jul 2017 This is the fifth in a series of short critical looks at books of literary criticism. Yes, a writer writing about writers who write about writers! I composed these for…
Author post… Recursions, Part 4: Jane Smiley’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel” 28 Jul 2017 This is the fourth in a series of short critical looks at books of literary criticism. Yes, a writer writing about writers who write about writers! I composed these for…
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…
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