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
About five months ago, I bought a countdown clock that sits directly below my computer monitor, and for 157 days it’s been ticking down. It’s been ticking down to my self-imposed deadline for the second draft of my behemoth epic novel (a series, actually). Last December, I set a deadline for myself: I would finish … 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
Last weekend, I attended a surprise party for my younger sister’s 50th birthday. The party, hosted by her husband and best friend, was a great success, mostly because she never had a clue about it. During the party, I found myself among some of my sister’s friends from high school. These women were a couple … Read more
Lately, more than ever, I’ve been thinking about a quote by the late, great playwright Sam Shepard: “Aloneness is a condition of writing. You look at all the writers that have come up with something worth its own salt, and they’re utterly alone.” “Aloneness is a condition of writing.” I’ve come not just to accept, … Read more
This morning, to celebrate my birthday and the fact that I’m probably in the best shape of my life since I was 17, I went cross-country skiing alone at a local state park (James Baird). Anyone who knows me or has followed my blog for a while knows there’s nothing unusual about this. Indeed, it’s … Read more
I have a T-shirt with a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald on it. The quote reads, “You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say.” This is the reason why I so seldom write blog entries: because I usually don’t have anything to say. Well, now that … 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
For a novelist, sometimes a minuscule change in routine, place or living situation can produce a massive shift in perspective that opens the floodgates of creativity. Having moved over 40 times in my 49 years, I’ve experienced this phenomenon often in my writing life. In June 2010, having been back in my high school town … Read more
WARNING: This entry contains spoilers about the novel A Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Continue reading at your own risk! Most of my mystery novels, and my fiction in general, start from a kernel of an idea, a factoid, an image. I see or hear something that piques my interest, but whatever it is I sense … Read more
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 I enjoy having a dedicated space for my writing, an actual home office, “a room of one’s own” as Virginia Woolf put it, I’m not one of those precious novelists … 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
I’m writing this blog entry in one of my favorite Asian restaurants: Momiji in Rhinebeck, NY. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve been writing in Asian restaurants for over 25 years. Maybe it’s that when Chinese or Japanese waitresses get talking in their native tongues, their voices take on a soothing quality, surrounding me … 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 the first installment of this piece, I described the first half of my writing process: Writing the first draft in longhand or on a typewriter Storing the completed draft in a drawer Editing the hand- or type-written manuscript with a blue pen Retyping the manuscript into a word processor Now, hold on to your … Read more
I’m writing this blog entry on my latest piece of low-tech equipment, an Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter. All told, I now have six typewriters: • The Lettera 32 • A Royal Quiet Deluxe • An Olympia SM9 Deluxe • An … 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
Back in December, after having completed the first draft of a 550,000-word, 1,600-page novel, I took a nearly month-long vacation (my first in years). For one week of the vacation, my wife and I explored Quebec, stayed at at a ski resort, and went cross-country skiing, swimming and hot-tubbing every day. One afternoon in the … 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
A brief excerpt from my new humorous memoir, coming out this fall: I can’t speak for all blocked writers, but when I’m blocked, I seek out conflict with people and institutions, and I channel my creative tension into distractions, raising my procrastination from writing to a rarefied art form. Over the past 25 years as … Read more
I’m currently 250,000 words into a novel that looks like it will go to 300,000 words. It could go as long as one of my favorite novels, Anna Karenina. Since my longest published novel to date (A Truth Stranger Than Fiction) is only 90,000 words, the novel-in-progress will likely end up being three times as long. … 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
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 January doing promotion for the book, and while the number of reviews of the book so far is small, they have been overwhelmingly positive. If you’d like to learn more … Read more
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 the ass. Here is the quote from that book that had the greatest impact on me: “So many unfinished projects wait in drawers, in closets, and on hard drives. They … 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
When Henry David Thoreau went to the woods by Walden Pond in Concord, Mass. in 1845, he had his own, somewhat convoluted, reasons for doing so: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had … Read more
Today I attended an Authors’ Luncheon hosted by the Junior League of Poughkeepsie. The luncheon was a benefit to raise money for a JLP–Dutchess Community College scholarship—a cause I was honored to be a part of. I was one of three authors, the other two being historical fiction authors Alyson Richman and Kathy Leonard Czepiel. We … Read more
A New Year demands new writing projects and a new workspace. And since I’m a writer who is deeply inspired or discouraged by his environment, I need a workspace that has a lot of inspirational quotes, pictures and objects around me when I work. Look closely and you can find all of my talismans and inspirational … Read more
Since October, I’ve been back at work on a few new projects, including new Dakota Stevens adventures, and to celebrate how well the writing has been going, I’m putting all of my books on sale. From December 20 through January 3 (on most platforms), all of my books are on sale at the bargain price of … Read more
Forget any romantic images you might have of novel-writing: that it’s nothing but staring out big picture windows at the sea and autographing copies of your books. No, unfortunately novel-writing, even if you love it, is a draining, soul-sucking enterprise. While writing my novels, I strive so hard to make each one the very best it … Read more
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, Deal Waters, and my aunt, Laverne, knew that I wanted to become a writer and bought me a beautiful pen to encourage me. The pen was (and still is) a Montblanc … 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
“Chris, whatever you do, just keep writing.” —Anne Bernay, 5/1994 Twenty years ago this month, I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I knew I wanted to write, and that’s it. That’s all I knew. Since graduating from college in Boston two years earlier, I had been working as a reporter for a … Read more
In my blog post yesterday, I mentioned my upcoming internet radio interview with Pam Stack, host of Authors on the Air, on Wed., April 30 at 8:00 p.m. Well, as a corollary to that interview, Pam’s co-host, Lucie Dunn, does a written interview with authors appearing on Pam’s show and publishes them to her Authors … Read more
