American Novelist
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
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
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
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
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
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