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
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
A Real Piece of Work and the entire Dakota Stevens Mystery Series might never have happened were it not for a bad office chair. During the winter of 2002-03, I was laid up in bed with an extremely painful herniated disc in my lower back. In addition to writing every day and submitting my stories … Read more
In recent weeks, there has been a lot of positive activity regarding my latest book, my memoir of the writing life, Perpetuating Trouble. But what makes this activity particularly pleasant for me is this: it came about more or less spontaneously, without my having to do much of anything. In fact, you could say that … 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
I love writing. I love sitting down with half a dozen fresh Blackwing 602 pencils, sharpening them to a razor edge and filling up pages of a notebook with the words of a new novel. I love sitting in front of my Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter and banging out pages. I love typing those pages … Read more
Today I’m pleased to announce the release of The Ronald And Other Plays, a collection that includes five short plays and my first full-length play, The Ronald. The collection is available now as a Kindle ebook, and will be published as a print paperback within a week or two. * Summary of The Ronald “Fabulously Caucasian” billionaire … 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
Today I decided to price A Real Piece of Work, the 1st novel in my critically acclaimed Dakota Stevens Mystery Series, at just 99¢. This price will remain in effect for the foreseeable future. I’m hoping that avid mystery readers, reluctant to pay full price for the first novel in a series, will find the … Read more
I’ve been tired of social media for a long time. However, like a drug addict, I’ve continued to take hits off it, hoping to get a similar high as in the past, only to discover that no matter how much time and energy I invest in it, I’m never going to get anything substantial back from … Read more
Between January 2012 and this month (over 3 years), I sold my novels on Amazon exclusively. I did this under their KDP “Select” (Kindle Direct Publishing Select) program because I was convinced of the rumors: that if your books were in Select (making them ineligible to be sold on any other platforms), they would get … Read more
I wasn’t going to write the latest Dakota Stevens mystery. Back in June of last year, at a reading I gave from my then-new pastoral novel One Hundred Miles from Manhattan, an audience member asked me whether I would be writing another Dakota Stevens novel. I had written the first draft of what became A Truth … Read more
’Twas the night before the night before Christmas, And all through this writer’s head, Not a bad thought was stirring, not even dread. The writer was thankful, most of all for Alexas, And his many readers and fans, from London to Texas. Thankful, too, for advance readers Hillary and Tony, Upon whom he could always … Read more
More than anything, we writers want readers—particularly discerning readers and critics—to get our work. We want readers to see the parallels to other literature and to make the comparisons without our having to point these things out. We want readers to appreciate the long hours that we put into making our books as close to perfect as our talent … 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
Please forgive the cumbersome title of this piece. I’m still sick and a little delirious, but I don’t want to put off my readers any longer. I also wanted the title of this to be easily noticed by search engines and such. This is just a short announcement to let you know that, after … Read more
IndieReader, the trusted and informative web-zine about all things indie publishing, has included my book of short stories, The Man, The Myth, The Legend, on their list of the Best Indie Books of 2013. (Mine is near the end.) Back in July, IndieReader (IR) gave the collection a 5-star review and the distinction of being one of their … Read more
Today, I’m in my first-ever radio interview. I haven’t heard the completed, edited version yet, so you can bet I’m going to tune in to hear how I did. If you’re interested in hearing about the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series, my fiction, and writing in general, tune in today (Thursday, Dec. 19) at 6:30 pm … Read more
Today I did the unthinkable. In the literary world, what I did is tantamount to crossing the Rubicon. It’s something that, in 20 years of submitting my work to literary journals, I have never done before: I replied to a rejection letter. Actually, I replied to a rejection email (times have changed), but the substance of … 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
So I was browsing Kindle books on Amazon earlier today and came upon one that thoroughly pissed me off. Truly, this book represents everything that’s wrong with ebooks. In the content, advertising and book cover, the author details how a writer can write a book a week, and how turning out such a quantity of … Read more
This is just a quick entry to let readers know that my books—The Man, The Myth, The Legend; The Rich Are Different; and A Real Piece of Work—are back on the Amazon Kindle platform exclusively. For Amazon Prime members, this means that you can “borrow” any of my books for free. (And I get paid for the … Read more
After several months of getting the words right, working with my cover designer and ebook formatter, and ensuring that the book I ask readers to buy into is the absolute best I can make it, I’m finally ready to publish my new story collection, The Man, The Myth, The Legend (MML). Over the past three … Read more
My new short story collection, The Man, The Myth, The Legend, will be released in less than a week, but I wanted to give readers a sneak preview of the collection’s content, hopefully piquing people’s interest in the book before it appears. A collection of entertaining and unique stories about 10 men, The Man, The Myth, … Read more
My new short story collection, THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND, will be released within a month. In the meantime, here are the professions of the 10 very different men featured in the stories: – African big-game hunter – Writer and bond salesman – Road sign “engineer” – Professional dog finder/dogcatcher – Global grain explorer – … Read more
IndieReader, the popular and informative web-zine about self-published books, reviewed A Real Piece of Work back in February and gave the novel 5 stars. So when I published The Rich Are Different over the summer, I submitted the novel to them for a possible review. They were swamped at the time, but I followed up with them … Read more
A year ago, when I published A Real Piece of Work, I did it the hard way. I formatted and converted the book myself. Although I have some web design experience and am relatively comfortable with HTML and XML, and although the final product turned out great, it took me a solid month of 16-hour days … Read more
A little more than a year ago, I published A Real Piece of Work for the Kindle, not for a second anticipating the terrific success the book would have. In fact, when I published it, my only hope was to sell 1,000 copies, at which time I would release the second novel, The Rich Are Different. I thought it … Read more
The other day, after publishing the second novel in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series—The Rich Are Different—I pulled a giant plastic crate labeled “Dakota Stevens Stuff” out of the closet. This crate contains notebooks, early drafts, and reams of research for the first book in the series, A Real Piece of Work. As I started to … Read more
The second book in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series by Chris Orcutt, The Rich Are Different, is now available for Kindle on Amazon. In February, I started re-editing the novel, and five strenuous months later, it’s finally ready. In the last month alone, I went through the manuscript half a dozen times. I wanted it to … Read more
Greetings, readers. Today, for the first time in the history of my blog, I’m making somebody else the focus. Today I’m going back to my roots as a newspaper reporter and interviewing Jeff Bennington, creator of The Kindle Book Review and author of a new book about the indie publishing phenomenon, The Indie Author’s Guide … Read more
Back in late November 2011 when I released A Real Piece of Work, I promised to release book #2 in the series, The Rich Are Different, once book #1 sold 1,000 copies. When I wrote that, I was convinced it would take me at least 10 months to sell that many copies (an average of … Read more
Last week I said I would report on the results of my 2 “free days” on Amazon’s KDP Select: the total number of free downloads, as well as the number of sales of A Real Piece of Work in the days afterwards. So, without further ado, here are the numbers: Free Downloads (approx.): Day 1 = … Read more
The big problem facing writers today is finding a balance between writing and self-promotion. I’m currently doing a free promotion of my Kindle mystery novel, A Real Piece of Work, and I’ve discovered that it’s easy for tweeting, posting to Facebook, and blogging and the like to take over your life. Meanwhile, in my own … Read more
According to the new, social-networking philosophy of book promotion, one of the most effective ways of building your audience is to give away copies of your book. Of course the old-school part of me—the part of me that has been paid for my writing ever since I was a cub reporter—bristles at this. I don’t … Read more
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a mystery novel, a mystery novel that only one agent and zero editors believed in. This mystery novel was read by editors at top publishing houses including Dutton, Harper, St. Martin’s Press, Harcourt, Tor and Poisoned Pen. It was even read by a major movie studio. Yet none of … Read more
I have read hundreds of books on writing. Conservatively figuring an average of 15 per year, over 24 years that makes 360 books on the subject. Books on voice, style, grammar, plotting, dialogue, point of view, syntax, narration, description, characterization, novel writing, technical writing, short story writing, nonfiction writing, query writing, getting an agent and … Read more
This one is for you readers. For those of you who took a risk on a relatively unknown quantity (me) by plunking down cash for my PI/mystery novel, A Real Piece of Work. For reading it, and for expressing your love of the book to everyone you know. Your words of praise for the novel … Read more
Friends, Romans, Countrymen: I’ve received dozens of messages from would-be book-buyers who say, “I’d love to read A Real Piece of Work, but I don’t have a Kindle.” NOTE: You don’t need a Kindle to read my novel. With the FREE Kindle Reader app, you can read it on your iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Droid, Windows … Read more
A common piece of advice given to writers is to envision your ideal reader and write your book to that person. And although I didn’t do that when I wrote A Real Piece of Work (I wrote it for myself first and an audience second), I did have in mind one reader whose attention and respect … Read more
What did I learn from publishing the first novel in my new detective series on Kindle? A lot of disjointed things that would take too much time and brainpower to construct into a narrative (I want to get back to, you know, writing), so I’m going to present them to you as bullet points: (NOTE: If … Read more
The short answer is this: A writer writes to be read, and the two P.I. novels I wrote that were sitting on my hard drive weren’t being read by anyone. I wanted people to read them, to be entertained by them. That’s why I wrote them, and that’s why, after running them through the gauntlet … Read more
Walking into the diner yesterday, I glanced at the honor box containing our village newspaper, The Millbrook Round Table, and was shocked to read the following headline: Round Table Publishes Last Issue, Closes Its Doors I was numb as I went inside and had my two cups of black coffee. Part of me wished I … Read more
A while back, I got in an online argument with another writer. He was proffering financial advice to writers, in effect saying this: “I made $164,000 last year as a writer, but I’m the exception, so whatever you’re doing now to earn a living, don’t quit your day job.” The originality of his message blew … Read more
Toiling away on index cards has a way of putting things in perspective. Whether you’re hunched over a cubicle deep in your local library, or lying on your stomach atop your bed with the cards spread around you, scribbling on 3″x5″ pieces of paper forces you to immerse yourself in the process of writing. It … Read more