The Fun of Writing Crime Fiction
I knew that if I was going to write a novel, I was going to have fun writing crime fiction. It was fun getting back at the bullies and jerks, the gold-diggers, troublemakers, and narcissists in your...
Too Many Cats: My life was filled with cats, and writing crime fiction.
I moved to a mountain village in Central California where a small group of good-hearted people were battling a desperate overpopulation of unwanted cats. We started a chapter of the SPCA. Fostering...
Mentors
I don’t think I’ve had a real up close mentor, mostly because I’ve been too over-awed by the ones I admire and too shy to ask for help. But I’ve watched a lot of writers from a distance and learned...
Multi-tasking
Is there anything in life that doesn’t require multi-tasking skills of some sort or another? At any stage in life? Employers want workers who can juggle. Husbands, children, lovers, and readers...
Finding a New Way to Kill Someone Off
Today I am hosting my friend Marilyn Meredith. She is sharing news of her new book, A Cold Death. Be sure to read to the end of this post to enter Marilyn's contest. When you’ve written as many...
What Writers Do to Sell a Few Books
So I got an invitation to sign books more than one hundred miles away, and a two-and-a-half-hour drive from my mountain top village to coastal California. Specifically, Santa Maria. A bookstore...
The Cruelest Enemy: Self-doubt
The best writing advice I ever got was watching the agony of a writer who couldn’t bring himself to write The End. As a result, he never finished anything and still remains in the ranks of the...
Writing Something Different for a Change
I adapted a short story I wrote long ago for three characters. We have two little theater companies in our mountain village in Central California. I went to a first reading a couple of years ago...
I thought everyone could write if they just sat down and put their mind to it. As my facility for words came easily to me, I never thought it was important. A facility for manipulating numbers was...
