Wake Me Up comes out in the next three months from Gravity Books, enough time to plan each detail of its release. The publishing side of any book is the most difficult to get through. There are too many steps to follow, but each step does bring the book closer to that miraculous point where…
Has it been a month since the last chapter? I apologize. The holidays have been a blur. A stress fracture in my right foot has kept me immobile . . . sitting is difficult as well, putting any weight on this foot is a bother. Still, I managed to write over two thousand words for…
Well, it’s been a year and a half since my last publication, an eon in any writing life, and I’m thrilled to announce the first book by my brand new publisher, Booktrope. They surrounded me with an incredible team of industry professionals and helped make Hark—A Christmas Collection a terrific debut, or reintroduction. Here is the…
It’s been a longer time between chapters of A Play Demonic (The Queen’s Idle Fancy) since the last part was double-sized at almost 2,000 words. Soon, next week, the story will pass 20,000 words and inch further into novella territory. This episode dwells on poor Pete “Petey” Quarles, a meth user arrested and released because…
I must’ve read Donna Tartt’s first grand-in-theme novel, The Secret History, three times so far in this lifetime (hehe), but resisted The Little Friend—boy was I a dunce. It’s just as terrific, and gothic, and lush. Can’t wait to read her new book, The Goldfinch. Tartt’s an author of twisty mysteries that dwell on…
Here is where I get to officially shout: COMING SOON This is not the final cover to The Conversationalist . . . only a parody. Kriss Morton, Cabin Goddess, came up with this image after hearing the title. Kipling told her she wanted to be a star. If you need Kipling for your own book covers,…
The inspiration driving this tale was to use only one setting: a beach. And the challenge I set myself was to give Sandcastle a twist that would be so shocking that a reader would gasp and begin reading the story over again from the beginning to see how each action followed another in natural fashion.…
The young man has never been afraid of hats before. In fact, he’s recently found himself admiring them. The hats on the heads of the men in this town have actually seemed to him quite marvelous. So it is strange that he should now be so frightened–so incredibly frightened–of this one. — from Ben Loory’s The…
Okay, I’ll stop with these two happy Kipling photos and carry on with my recommendation 😉 I searched for the anthology The Best American Short Stories 2011, a series that comes out each Fall with a different guest Editor. This year, Series Editor, Heidi Pitlor, chose Geraldine Brooks, who was born in Australia, grew up in…
Here is a new list of five authors to discover, and two to grow on! The evening mist is back over the pond. The air is colder. Fall into Winter waterborne storms are brewing off the Pacific Northwest coastline, and these maelstroms usually hit us hard in November and December. It’s way past time to…