What a year! I sold my first novel, Cracking the Ice, to WestSide Books. It will be appearing in May, 2011. That all by itself makes 2010 a watershed year. I also sold three short stories: “Age is a Four-Letter Word,” “A Simple Matter of Priorities,” and “Blue Note Heaven.” I wrote another novel, several proposals, […]
The Power of Inertia
inertia – the tendency of a body to preserve its state of rest or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force. Man, does this apply to writers! The more you write, the easier it is to keep writing. The more you don’t write, the harder it is to get started. Before I go […]
Music For Another World
I just got my author’s copies of Music For Another World, an anthology of “strange fiction” short stories with a common theme of music. My story “Blue Note Heaven” leads off Act I. I hope you’ll read it. If you live in the USA, however, you’ll need to do a little more work to get a copy. It’s a British anthology […]
Hitting the Lottery
Today’s the anniversary of the day I hit the lottery. A whole lot of years ago, I married the woman who remains my best friend to this day. I still can’t believe how lucky I got. Since this website is focused on writing and the creative life, let me connect the dots. If you’re pursuing […]
Author Photos: Going with “The Big Goofy”
Some people seem to have been born in front of a camera. In every photograph, they look flawless. Perfect smiles. Hair never out of place. An illustrated dictionary would include a shot of them under the entry for photogenic. Not me. If I adopt a serious pose, I look like a serial killer. And unless I’m flat out […]
Printer Troubles
There are some stories you just shouldn’t print out at work. But, hey, sometimes it’s just too convenient. You’ve gotten a rejection and you don’t want that sad puppy staring you in the face. You want to print it out and drop it by the post office on the way home. At my day job, […]
A Writer’s Health
If we’re smart, we want to be like P.D. James and Frederick Pohl, writing productively into our late eighties or nineties.
Birthdays of Three Seminal Influences
Today marks the third of three straight days of birthdays celebrated by seminal writing influences of mine. Jeanne Cavelos, whose Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop turned my writing career around, celebrated her birthday on Wednesday. When I attended Odyssey in 2006, I was struggling mightily, more with confidence than anything else. I’d enjoyed considerable success with my […]
On Hemingway and Immortality
In the end, it was just a house. I warmed up for my tour of Ernest Hemingway’s house on Key West by listening to Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto as I walked, figuring what better way to set the stage for artistic immortality than hearing Johann Sebastian at his very best. I paid my twelve dollars and […]