American Novelist
For over ten years, or 3,697 days to be exact, I’ve been working on a novel about teens in the 1980s. The novel eventually became so long (over a million words, and twice the length of War and Peace) that I had to split it into nine books or episodes. The result, Bodaciously True & … Read more
Greetings, Dear Reader. I’m dictating this blog entry while walking on my treadmill, so please excuse me if I ramble or my “smart” phone substitutes incorrect homophones (e.g., “there, their, they’re”). As you’ll soon read, I have a lot going on and need to multitask. I think it’s been over a year since I last … Read more
A month ago, I finished the third draft of what I’m calling my “teen epic.” Between December 2023 and the end of April 2024, I cut 175,817 words (or 11.4%) from the 1.5 million-word manuscript, trimming it down to 1,365,148 words. The epic novel is now actually 10 novels, and my aim is to cut … Read more
A couple weeks ago, I finished the second draft of the third episode (or volume) of the epic-length novel I’ve been writing for seven years. I’m now headed into the homestretch with this draft, since the next episode will be the last one in the series. What this means is, I hope to be finished … Read more
Lately, more than ever, I’ve been thinking about a quote by the late, great playwright Sam Shepard: “Aloneness is a condition of writing. You look at all the writers that have come up with something worth its own salt, and they’re utterly alone.” “Aloneness is a condition of writing.” I’ve come not just to accept, … Read more
I have a T-shirt with a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald on it. The quote reads, “You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say.” This is the reason why I so seldom write blog entries: because I usually don’t have anything to say. Well, now that … Read more
It’s only been a week since I “deactivated” my personal Facebook account and already I feel like a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders. This “deactivation” was a long time coming. Since 2015, I’d been using Facebook less and less—from spending hours on there per day to about 10 minutes per month. Regarding … Read more
The idea for The Perfect Triple Threat, a collection of three Dakota Stevens mystery novellas, didn’t come to me all at once. Rather, the book grew out of tiny, interesting seedlings that got my attention and wouldn’t let it go. The first glimmers of the book appeared on my radar in the spring and summer … Read more
WARNING: This entry contains spoilers about the novel A Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Continue reading at your own risk! Most of my mystery novels, and my fiction in general, start from a kernel of an idea, a factoid, an image. I see or hear something that piques my interest, but whatever it is I sense … Read more
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the backstory of my short story collection The Man, The Myth, The Legend, explaining what was happening in my life at the time to inspire me to write those stories about 10 larger-than-life men from all walks of life. This week I’d like to share some of my favorite … Read more
Compared to other novelists I know or have read about, I’m something of an anomaly: I’m a novelist who can write just about anywhere. While I enjoy having a dedicated space for my writing, an actual home office, “a room of one’s own” as Virginia Woolf put it, I’m not one of those precious novelists … Read more
Last week, in Part 1 of the story behind The Rich Are Different, I described my experiences during 9/11 in Manhattan and the months following, and how they pushed me to quit my corporate job and focus on being a novelist full-time. Now, in Part 2, I’m going to describe the development of the novel that … Read more
I’m writing this blog entry in one of my favorite Asian restaurants: Momiji in Rhinebeck, NY. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve been writing in Asian restaurants for over 25 years. Maybe it’s that when Chinese or Japanese waitresses get talking in their native tongues, their voices take on a soothing quality, surrounding me … Read more
In the first installment of this piece, I described the first half of my writing process: Writing the first draft in longhand or on a typewriter Storing the completed draft in a drawer Editing the hand- or type-written manuscript with a blue pen Retyping the manuscript into a word processor Now, hold on to your … Read more
I’m writing this blog entry on my latest piece of low-tech equipment, an Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter. All told, I now have six typewriters: • The Lettera 32 • A Royal Quiet Deluxe • An Olympia SM9 Deluxe • An … Read more
The opening sentence of Perpetuating Trouble is absolutely true: “I was told to write this book by a pair of alien girls.” That incident with the alien girls, along with everything else in my memoir about the writing life, really happened. Enter a Pair of Alien Girls On a glittering October morning in 2008, I … Read more
Back in December, after having completed the first draft of a 550,000-word, 1,600-page novel, I took a nearly month-long vacation (my first in years). For one week of the vacation, my wife and I explored Quebec, stayed at at a ski resort, and went cross-country skiing, swimming and hot-tubbing every day. One afternoon in the … Read more
I’m pleased to announce the release of my personal memoir about the writing life, Perpetuating Trouble. I’ve been working on this book on and off since 2008, and am finally ready to send it into the world. If you’d like to read more about the memoir, check out this link, or simply read the press release … Read more
A brief excerpt from my new humorous memoir, coming out this fall: I can’t speak for all blocked writers, but when I’m blocked, I seek out conflict with people and institutions, and I channel my creative tension into distractions, raising my procrastination from writing to a rarefied art form. Over the past 25 years as … Read more
I’m currently 250,000 words into a novel that looks like it will go to 300,000 words. It could go as long as one of my favorite novels, Anna Karenina. Since my longest published novel to date (A Truth Stranger Than Fiction) is only 90,000 words, the novel-in-progress will likely end up being three times as long. … Read more
Back in December I released the latest installment in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series, The Perfect Triple Threat. I spent most of December and part of January doing promotion for the book, and while the number of reviews of the book so far is small, they have been overwhelmingly positive. If you’d like to learn more … Read more
Two years ago, when I released the 3rd Dakota Stevens installment, I read one of those rare books that gave me a much-needed kick in the ass. Here is the quote from that book that had the greatest impact on me: “So many unfinished projects wait in drawers, in closets, and on hard drives. They … Read more
“At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.” — Virginia Woolf, diary, 3/22/1928 I stumbled upon this quotation earlier this week. What struck me most about it was that it expressed a thought I had back in February, when I turned 46 myself, although my version of the thought at the … Read more
When Henry David Thoreau went to the woods by Walden Pond in Concord, Mass. in 1845, he had his own, somewhat convoluted, reasons for doing so: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had … Read more
I have been writing fiction since I was 13 years old, when I first read Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger and was swept away not only by the story, but also by Fleming’s eloquence. This marks the thirty-second year that I’ve been writing (not necessarily publishing) fiction, and one of the things about writing that has never ceased … Read more
This is the very short story of a man and his pen. Around 1988, when I went to college to study philosophy, my forward-thinking uncle, Deal Waters, and my aunt, Laverne, knew that I wanted to become a writer and bought me a beautiful pen to encourage me. The pen was (and still is) a Montblanc … Read more
Since mid-June, I’ve been earnestly at work on the third Dakota Stevens mystery novel, but it wasn’t until last week that I felt the fetus that is the new book begin to kick. I’ve heard mothers, some of them friends of mine, describe the thrill of feeling the gestating baby kick for the first time. Many … Read more
Maybe I shouldn’t be giving away my writing secrets. Maybe I should be like Ernest Hemingway, who, with the exception of a couple of Paris Review interviews in which he gave cryptic answers to questions about writing craft, was selfish with his knowledge throughout his life and shared very little of it. But there’s something that … Read more
This evening, I did my first-ever LIVE radio interview, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. Host Pam Stack asked me some thought-provoking questions and gave me the opportunity to give detailed answers. There was also a wonderful, unexpected call-in—my friend and colleague Hillary Leftwich, who praised my new novel, One Hundred Miles … Read more
In my blog post yesterday, I mentioned my upcoming internet radio interview with Pam Stack, host of Authors on the Air, on Wed., April 30 at 8:00 p.m. Well, as a corollary to that interview, Pam’s co-host, Lucie Dunn, does a written interview with authors appearing on Pam’s show and publishes them to her Authors … Read more
On Wednesday, April 30 at 8:00 p.m. EST, I’m being interviewed LIVE on Authors on the Air with host Pam Stack. Besides my new novel, One Hundred Miles from Manhattan, we’ll be discussing my other fiction, the craft of writing, and anything else she decides to ask me. (I’m sure there will be surprises.) Some of … Read more
Back in February, my documentary filmmaker friend Jason Scott created a short documentary about me any my use of pencils for writing first drafts. The doc came out last month, but I realize now that it got buried on my “About” page, so many of you probably haven’t seen it.
Anyway, it’s about 3 minutes long, and if nothing else it proves that Jason can film anything—even a guy writing in pencil and talking about them—and it’s going to be interesting. I hope you enjoy it.
Today, for the first time in weeks, I took a walk. A long walk. I put on my coat and my Boston Red Sox cap, and I walked a quiet road north of where I live. I passed a pheasant farm, which, if you don’t know Millbrook, probably sounds ridiculous. But trust me—around this rarefied … Read more
