Category: Blog
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Writer’s Block
We all (as in all who indulge in creative writing) run into it on occasion: an invisible wall oriented somewhere within our brain that deadens the imagination and stops the hands from typing. It can rise up abruptly when you’re trying to figure out the next chapter, the ending of the book, or the ensuing…
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Kids
Oh, the pains and wonders of parenthood! Yes, from that first tiny wail as they take their first breath to flipping the cord as they complete their graduation from college, children enrapture, engage and enrage us, a very real extension of ourselves that shows the best and the worst we can be. The continuation (and…
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Gender
A bit of a different note for this blog, a brief examination of the differences in the ways men and women approach the world. What does that have to do with a scribbler, a teller of tales and a creator of fictions, you ask? A lot. Rare indeed is the novel that does not feature…
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John Blumen
Attentive people will notice that the covers of all nine of my books were done by the same man, John Blumen, a very talented commercial artist and illustrator. And also my oldest friend. John and I met in junior high school, and although we were in the same home room and sat quite literally beside…
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Flash from the (Far Distant) Past
The Story of Pharaoh’s Mountain Pharaoh’s Mountain is the ninth book in my little library of fiction, and it certainly qualifies as something different: a pre-history and political thriller set at the time of the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu (circa 2550 BC). Some may well be wondering how the hell did I…
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On the Evolution of God
I know, you’re asking yourself “Doesn’t he have that wrong? God is eternal. He doesn’t evolve.” I guess I could qualify it with the addition of “…in Hillebrecht’s Brain”, but I think the issue has wider ramifications than that. Religion keeps cropping up in my novels, and I was surprised to see a gradual change…
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Rejection
Rejection! Soul-crushing, image-destroying public humiliation, concentrated in the form of a standardized one-page piece of paper stating “does not currently fit our needs”! The dreaded rejection letter for a literary query. And it wasn’t even signed by a human being! Your newest and greatest offering, Cyrano Gets a Nose Job, has been spurned by the…
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The Joys of Trilogies and Book Series
If you’re a dedicated reader, you undoubtedly know the little rush of pleasure when you find a good book that you can’t put down and then discover it is part of a series, promising a succession of similar experiences awaiting you in the near future. It hit me first when I was 15 and came…
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A Book Without a Home
Yeah, well, we’ve all done it. Acted first, thought later. The impulse buy. Opening your mouth at the wrong time. The kiss that went too far. Act in haste, repent in leisure, a proverb as old as language itself. A lot can be understood – if not forgiven – in the heat of the moment,…
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Bad Endings
The nightmare in the bright, gleaming morning light. You’ve been slaving away for months at that new and exciting novel, The Unpainted Corner, thrilling at each successive chapter, glorying at the maturation and development of the characters, the stirring pace of the plot, the power of the prose beckoning the reader forward like a literary…