NEVER SPEAK has been out for 10 weeks. Thank you, everyone who has bought and reviewed it! News: NEVER SPEAK in its first library appearance at the Cutler Memorial in Plainfield, VT. Thank you, Jane Youngbear! I’m writing a prequel novella mystery to the Murderous Arts series, tentatively titled RAY OF DARKNESS. It takes place at…
When Art Imitates Life
Photo by Jack Alexander on Unsplash How a chance encounter turned me into a novelist. I first came to Hudson, NY in the early aughties. I’d been carrying on a long love affair with the past, so I took right to Warren Street, with its 165 antique stores. Each had its niche–Second Empire, Art Deco, Fifties Modern, 60s kitsch–making them feel…
Marketing Your Art is a Special Hell
But only if you think it is. Like many of my stories, this one has a front end (the present) and a back (the past.) I’ll start with the past. 1980 I was living in a fifth floor walkup in the scary northern tip of Manhattan, trying to get someone—anyone!— to pay me to…
The One Indispensable Word of Advice for Writers
Persist. Four years ago, I’d completed two novels in a mystery/thriller series. There was a lot of media buzz about self-publishing, and I was on the fence as to whether to go that way or hold out for a traditional deal. Over the months that I hemmed and hawed over my dilemma, I sensed that…
TV is the New Great American Novel
The New York Times weekly column “By the Book” interviews authors and famous people about what they read. Most have a bedside table threatening collapse from the mountain of books piled on it. They sprinkle their reading lists with obscure works, like that new translation of a 18TH century Latvian poet I’ve never heard of….
Murder Your Metaphors
(Part of an occasional series on writing) The process of learning to write comes in distinct stages, like peeling the layers of an onion. Each new layer first appears smooth and shiny. But over time the surface dulls and spiders with wrinkles. Somehow the layer that once appeared as an achievement has morphed into an…
You Can’t Write About Me!
(Dylan at Ginsburg’s typewriter) A few days ago I got an email confirming that something I suggested to someone a few months ago had resulted in a cool thing. Nothing scandalous, but it made a fun story. Something. Someone. Thing. Nothing. No, this is not an exercise in bad (i.e., purposely vague) writing. Please read…
Breakthrough
FOREST (Photo by Dawit Rezenè.) TREES Last fall was a tough time for me. The memoir I had worked on for years was rejected by all the agents I sent it too. The new website I had devoted much of a year and countless dollars to had not, as hoped , saved my business. Instead…
Ghost Writer
I hear voices. Scornful voices. In my head. They whisper –“You’re not a real writer.” ”No one’s published your book. You’ve never written for the New York Times or the New Yorker. Real writers…” I do my best to ignore them and keep writing. The same voices used to say, “You’re not a real composer. You’ve never received…
Practice Makes….More Practice
FLOW I’ve long been fascinated by the mystery of creativity. I witnessed the home births of my sons, the uncanny, inexplicable, OK, miraculous fact of holding against your chest a being that a half hour ago was invisible, silent, sightless, unbreathing. Something you helped make, that’s part of you, yet also completely separate. The ultimate magician’s…
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