American Novelist
Dear Reader, Early readers and reviewers have raved about Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome (to be published January 20, 2026), but a recent review from a Gen Z reviewer made it clear there’s a swath of young people out there who aren’t going to get it. Well, I’ve got news for those younger readers: I … 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
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
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
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
Between 2010 and 2011, I wrote over thirty short stories, many of which appeared in The Man, The Myth, The Legend or as chapters of the novel One Hundred Miles from Manhattan. Back when I was writing them, I was still pursuing publication for them in magazines, including what I then considered the crème de … 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
For about the past 30 years—or ever since I got my driver’s license—my best friend Jason Scott and I have attended the opening of the new James Bond movie together. This has entailed our playing hooky many times—from school, jobs, girlfriends and wives. Welcome to the awesomeness that is Bond Day. Of course, like the … 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
Recently I did a radio interview with Stephen Campbell, the terrific host of “Murders, Mysteries and Mayhem” on the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. The interview went very well, and it is slated to be available as a podcast sometime in the next few weeks. I will of course post an update about … Read more
Thanks to the thousands of readers of my Dakota Stevens mysteries, in the past 18 months I’ve been able to fulfill two lifelong dreams. The first was going to Paris, spending two solid weeks exploring every inch of that gorgeous city, and walking in the footsteps of my literary idols—including Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Flaubert and … Read more
Whenever I’m in the middle of rereading it, the novel Lolita casts such a spell on me that I often forget I have it on my person. Given its subject matter (a pedophile pining away for a pre-pubescent girl), this isn’t a very good idea. Given its subject matter, the book should have a plain … Read more
You know a book is a favorite of yours when you have multiple copies of it, and you find some of those copies in the oddest of places: under the couch in your field coat pocket under the car seat in the box of cat toys (cats, too, appreciate good literature) in a knapsack in … Read more