Suppose you have a beta reader. (In my experience, all beta readers are invaluable. Some throw you straight fastballs, some curveballs, some changeups or sliders, some sweepers or screwballs. Doesn’t matter. They’re all priceless in their own way.) In this case, a reader who absorbs your latest tome and opines about the novel’s main female […]
Girl Next Door or Deadly Vixen? In Pursuit of My Femme Fatale Fox Read More »
Those we knew before, faded now from our present lives, but not our memory. Faces, personalities, living spirits still so vivid in our minds they could step before us in the next instant without causing a second glance, a single eyeblink: “Oh, there your are. You’ve been gone awhile, but now you’re back, as if
Ghost Faces of the Past Meeting Imagined Ones of the Present Read More »
The Cold War novels I’ve read (you know the ones I mean: with their Ivy League and Oxford spies and nondescript moles, with their black or tangerine or whatever color ops, and with that endless line of flirty girls with their red-painted lips and brass-and-leather-strapped suitcases slipping behind East German or Soviet lines to work
SOLDIER IN GERMANY: Sleeping With Armageddon in Cold War Europe Read More »
Creating that special fiction world readers want to spend time could be akin to some higher power creating a new and intriguing world people might wish to inhabit, or at least until the two-headed, methane-breathing Gogalons descend upon them from the surrounding hills. Of course, there are similarities and differences between these two creation types.
Competing With the Gods Read More »
The main reason I write is because I cannot not write. It’s like breathing for me. If I stop, I can only suspect what would happen next. Plus I enjoy it. Just like I enjoy breathing. It keeps things moving, keeps the blood flowing, makes everything else possible. What’s not to like? But the main
Winter’s almost here again. Great. No, I mean that. Great. I don’t mind a salt shake of bad weather, as a rule. I’m a writer, for God’s sake. Cloudy days and rain on the roof give me inspiration. I find sunshine annoying, when I’m trying to create. And if there’s a soothing snowfall outside—whoa—look out.
The Great Texas Ice Storm & Freeze of 2021 Read More »
As I’ve said, I tend to avoid (or try to) the black-and-white manifestations that present themselves to me in my life. By this I mean the uncorrupted or totally corrupted of anything. I really don’t believe that the absolute bad or good exists in anything; that is, giving exception to such things as tornados and
My interest in characters, fictional or otherwise, increases as their flaws, frailties and eccentricities are revealed. Preferably, surprisingly so, layer by layer, and with much painful angst; not belly-button gazing, but reflection and revelation and reaction to their human condition, and what the hell they’re going to do about it or no. Perfect or near-perfect
The Mysteries of Character-sourcing Read More »
Having lived in New Orleans for over a decade—those years of stumbling up and down the broken, midnight-hour cobblestone streets and secret pathways; the array of characters and endless meld of voices encountered; the archeological layers of decaying artifact amid ghostly generation, reaching back to its primeval mud, cut in twain by that great river;
Writing the Underbelly of New Orleans Read More »
If you look at a map of Southern Italy, you see the spur of the boot (too high-backed to be of use to a working cowboy) sticking some forty miles out into the Adriatic Sea. And in the center of this spur is the dark and looming Monte Gargano where, in the year 493, a
ORIGINS OF A TITLE, or: FRENCH QUARTERS is Not Just About the French Quarter Read More »