Faith, Fiction, Friends

I ’d heard that, as you age, you often become more interested in art. What I didn’t expect was to discover how that growing interest in art ...

In the seven months since my last novel  Brookhaven  was published, I’ve been focused on talking about it, writing about it, publicizing it,...

Like most of my generation, I read poetry in English classes in high school. It wasn’t until I was a high school senior that I read poetry t...

For more than a year, I’ve been researching / writing/ researching / writing a historical novel set during the American Civil War. It’s loos...

How many openings can a novel have? Let me count the ways.   I’d never experienced the problem of too many ways to open a novel. Five novels...

The idea has been in my head for years – a story about my great-grandfather. But I knew only a few facts about him, passed down by my father...

A single comment by my father nearly six decades ago led to a story idea.     “Your great-grandfather was too young to enlist in the Civil W...

I’ve learned there is more than one kind of writing block.   I’ve been blessed with never to have experienced writer’s block, that immobiliz...

I admit it. When it comes to writing, I’m a pack rat.     I keep everything: blog posts that never saw the light of day, book reviews I writ...

I knew the manuscript would be tricky. The story is about what flows from a hoax. The hoax itself occupies a tiny part of the story; the ram...

I spent almost four years writing my first novel before I put a single word on screen or paper.   Writing a novel wasn’t intentional. A song...

On July 1, with the publication of my fifth novel, I brought a five-book series to a conclusion. Each of the five was about 93,000 word...

The  news report  made quite a splash. Researchers at Durham University in the U.K. teamed up with  The Guardian newspaper and the  Edi...

The manuscript sits with the publisher. A fifth novel, it’s the last of a series. The story arc that began with listening to an airplan...

A friend and fellow writer asked me if I edited my writing as I wrote or after I finished a draft. My answer was yes. I do both. I edit...

I was an early reader. I don’t recall how early, but I do remember riding my red bicycle to the dime store when I was six, to spend 59 ...

Like most of us, I read poetry – a lot of poetry – in high school and college English classes primarily because it was assi...

Researching a historical novel is more than a challenge; it feels like a career.  I’ve written four novels in a series, with the ma...