American Novelist
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
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
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
It was long. At 2 hours on the phone, it was by far the longest interview I’ve ever done. But it was worth it. To do the interview, I had to stay up way past my usual 10 p.m. (Eastern) bedtime, and I had to pound down half a gallon of coffee beforehand, but it was … Read more
While doing research for my book A Truth Stranger Than Fiction, I found a lot of material on helium-3 and oil, some of which suggested the existence of a conspiracy between the U.S. government and the fossil fuels industry to suppress development of helium-3 and moon mining so that the resources in the Bakken Formation … Read more