I have had a work in progress for over a year now. Which is to say I've been preparing to work on a historical novel for over a year, but…
For some number of years now, I have made the local Peet's my go-to place for writing. At points along the way, I have progressively (regressively?) changed my mode of…
Last April, after sending out around fifty queries for two novels, and probably twice that many short story submissions over the past three years, with no success, I decided to…
Watch this video on The Scene. The New Yorker recently posted a video online (embedded above) taken from its show, which airs on Amazon. The video is based on one of…
Sadly, I have become one of those people who have to have their seat at the local coffeehouse. It's embarrassing. Everyone I know in Davis knows they can find me…
The more I read first passages in books, the more I see this first part as œThe Promise of the Book. It™s really where the author needs to say, œHere™s…
Recently, I came across some awkward language I had written. It wasn't Latin, per se, but it was stilted. It reminded me of John Gardner's dictum not to use Latinate…
Why I Wrote the Story For some time, I have been planning to write a novel about the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots (also known as the Rodney…
A few months ago, I completed what I think is a version of my novel March Bicycle Madness worth circulating. Since then, I have been settling down to the far more…
As I stated earlier, I decided to make the protagonist of my first novel an amateur sleuth. As all other decisions in getting started on a novel, I worried about…