Category: Blog
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Reflections on Retirement
It’s now some 20 months since retirement after 45 years with the same company, and I think this is just the right amount of distance – far enough into retirement but not too far from the memory of work – to offer some observations, albeit, rambling ones. From the start, I realized that I now…
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The Importance…and Problem…of Setting
Location. Location. Location. The three things that determine a property’s value. Location in fiction may not be quite so important, but it is consistently and vastly underrated. Yes, characters, actions, dialogue, plot development, and even prose are more immediately obvious to the reader, but not to the characters who are the avatars of the reader. …
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So, After the Launch…
We have ignition! A successful launch! The payload is on its way! No, this isn’t announcing the most recent NASA satellite or Space-X endeavor. It’s the upload of my newest novel to Amazon/Kindle, Black Jack: Behind the Waves, the first book of the Behind the World trilogy (series). After years or writing/rewriting, months of editing,…
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Finishing a Novel – or Three
So, you think it’s fun to finish a novel, to put the final touches to a work on which you have lavished your energy, your talent, and your love for months or even years, and written The End as the definitive last words? Well, sort of. First off, like house repair and maintenance, it is…
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Old Book, New Title
In the near future, no later than August 2025, we will be releasing a new version of House Amongst the Dunes in both ebook and paperback on Amazon Books. The book was first published in 2021 to few reviews (though all positive) and almost as few sales, a testament to my failings as a book…
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Regrets?
Regrets? I’ve had a few… I mean, who hasn’t? The job opportunity you didn’t pursue, the romantic encounter you let go (or didn’t), even the insult you let slide, these can all be Morley’s ghost, clanging chains of what “might have been” on sleepless nights or depressing days. I will say this: regrets are, for…
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Hyper-Productivity and Self-Deception
I just went through the most productive 5 days of my entire writing career. Starting very early Thursday morning and ending Tuesday afternoon, I completed some 10 chapters, consisting of about 43 double-spaced pages, and finished the third book of the current trilogy. This was part of a surge going back several weeks, and it…
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Wasting Time
“What a waste of time!” Probably the ultimate insult or rebuke, an inference that some small portion of your existence has been stolen by an experience or activity so useless, so pathetic as to leave you with nothing of value whatsoever. Well, I’ll never get those two hours back. It’s the movie “Forecast: Cloudy with…
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How NOT to Twist a Plot
Ah, the plot twist! That unexpected swing of the story nobody saw coming that widens the eyes, quickens the heart, and sets the mind to racing. It can be the rousing climax of the book…or a puzzling let down with a “Huh?” or worse “What the…?” I just finished White Smoke by Andrew Greeley, and…
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Chapter Boards
When you write a book, you don’t start out with a first sentence and go merrily along to the closing paragraph, pausing only briefly to correct punctuation. The process is much more involved, creating, altering, and often ultimately rejecting a wide range of characters, chapters, and even entire sections of the book. The manner of…