My Literary Secret Weapon
I have a literary secret weapon. In fact, it’s so good I’m reluctant to spread the word about it, for fear of giving up what I consider a big...
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Why an Aunt?
One of the many interesting things about being a writer is that you can go back, look at what you’ve written, and glean things about yourself that...
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Playing the Movie
I’m not sure whether other writers do this, but there’s a step I perform in the final rewrites of all of my books that I call ‘Playing the Movie’...
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It’s All in the List
A major difficulty in writing a novel is plotting, and one aspect of that process I always seem to get stuck on is coming up with plausible...
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Hail to the Grinders
I had a friend a few years ago who could be described as something between what’s euphemistically known as an ‘entrepreneur’ and a cheap shyster...
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The Art of Not Thinking
In a well known Zen story, a master calligrapher draws the Japanese characters for ‘The First Principle’ 84 times as a critical student looks on...
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Final Edit on Kindle?
Some time ago, when the release of my Detective/Scifi novel, THE ARX, was delayed, I decided to read the novel from start to finish – as a...
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Writer’s Mind, Beginner’s Mind
When I was in high school (many, many years ago), my math teacher told us about a consulting group whose special expertise was that they didn’t...
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Do it by Instinct
I recently submitted the manuscript for my latest novel, BLACK HEART : ORIGIN, to my editor. I got it back, with the usual mass of comments and...
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