On the Virtues of Being Able to Write Anywhere
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…
WANTED: A 21st Century Author Promoter
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…
Print book cover for THE RONALD AND OTHER PLAYS.
The Ronald And Other Plays: A Political Satire of How Trump Won the Presidency
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.…
New Year, New Work
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…
The Writer with the Master Number Clears the Deck
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…
Paying Attention as a Fiction Writer
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…
Me and My Montblanc
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,…
Long Walk Brings Writing Epiphany
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,…
My Second Office
Writing full-time is a lonely enterprise. Especially in the winter, and especially if you live in the boondocks, have only one car, and the closest semblance…
Chris Orcutt’s Barbaric Yawp
“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass THE OTHER DAY, I wrote that I was going to “take it…
Burning Your Ships
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…