American Novelist
For over ten years, or 3,697 days to be exact, I’ve been working on a novel about teens in the 1980s. The novel eventually became so long (over a million words, and twice the length of War and Peace) that I had to split it into nine books or episodes. The result, Bodaciously True & … Read more
Back in March, I wrote a cheeky blog entry about how COVID-19 wouldn’t change my work as a writer a single bit. Turns out, I was wrong. Despite people having more free time on their hands, my and other writers’ book sales are down dramatically. Because schools and libraries are closed for the foreseeable future, … Read more
The novel that became The Rich Are Different was written during the winter of 2001–02, over a year before I even conceived of the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series. In order to give you a clear understanding of the backstory behind The Rich Are Different, I need to tell you about what I was doing on … 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
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
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
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
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