Recently, one of my blog readers sent me the link to comments made by Hannah MacDonald, head of an English publishing house. She was encouraging her colleagues to be kinder to writers. One wouldn’t want to squelch a budding Emily Dickenson, Jane Austin, or J. K. Rowling. (Click)
I opened my computer recently to find an article about the actor, John Malkovich. His latest commercial, it said, won’t be released for 100 years. A snippet of the film provided shows the actor placing a bottle of perfume in a vault, then locking it. In the next frame, presuma
Like the March Hare in Alice in Wonderland, I’m always in a hurry — which is peculiar because I’m retired. Tell that to my circadian clock, whichever one it is that keeps me impatient and eager to get on with my invented projects. When I was a child, my teachers warned m
I opened an email the other day from my publisher. Their note said they’d submitted my novel, Heart Land, for some book award. If they’d had asked me, I’d have told them not to bother. I don’t have much faith in awards. Wherever people gather, politics is likely to fol
Recently, I’ve reviewed two novels that played with time in their storyline for Just Read It, the YouTube book review program I co-host with author Susan Stoner. (Click) Personally, when plots mix episodes from the past with those of the present, exchanging them one after the othe
When I was a kid, my friends and I spoke in pig Latin when we wanted privacy while others were present. The rules were simple and familiar to many, though in our smugness, we weren’t aware of that until our 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Brown, slapped us down with a few pig Latin phra
Recently I came across a reference to a literary classic of which I was totally ignorant. I’m sure there are many great works lost to historical memory, but out of curiosity, I looked this one up. The work is Orlando Furioso written in 1516 by Ariosto, the man who coined the term
Pleased to announce my novella, “Agent of God,” is available in the new anthology, Under A Dark Sign, in paperback or eBook format. Enjoy. Click here to purchase a copy of my new book
In his article, “Confessions of a Catholic Novelist,” author William Giraldi, believes one cannot be a Catholic and a good novelist simultaneously. “Catholics already have the truth, whereas novelists write novels in part because they don’t.” (New Republic, July/August,
Gothic Spring, my novel, looks at the stranglehold Victorian values had on women. Nonetheless, my characters enjoy a little hanky-panky before the fall, unlike the outcomes in what is known in the commercial trade as “bonnet books.” Bonnet books, as writer Ann Neumann describes th