For my Halloween-adjacent article on SleuthSayers.org this week, I am sharing a true story drawn from my childhood. It’s a story I’ve never shared before, but it perfectly sums up my state of mind as a kid. And, in keeping with the Halloween theme, it also features a desperate criminal on the loose! What more could you ask for? You can check it out…

I have lived in Western North Carolina for more than 21 years. At first, I never saw any black bears. Then they were everywhere I looked, including my back yard. If you’re local, you have accepted that this land we call home is not really ours. It belongs instead to every bit of Nature that traipses through it. Wild turkeys, deer, opossums, foxes…but mostly bears. I’m talking about them this week in a sizable article at SleuthSayers, the group mystery blog that I write for. I’ve wanted to write something about them for a while now. The fact that the weather is starting to cool, and the bears are packing on weight for their presumed hibernation is…

Twenty-five years ago this morning, I was standing on the roof of my apartment building in Hoboken, watching as the second of the twin towers fell across the river in Manhattan. Though I’ve recalled the day many times over the years, and even written a short story about those events, I have come to accept how much I don’t recall, how much, in fact, I did not bother to record. That’s fine for civilians, but when you’re a reporter and writer, you’re supposed to…

I tend not to show my anger. It’s a blessing and a curse. When I do blow my top, it’s usually at something in the publishing industry, ensuring that the only people who ever witness it are my poor wife or fellow writers. This has earned me the nickname Angry Joe in some circles. Angry Joe reared his ugly head earlier this week when something in the local community set me off, and I felt compelled to write an email that I’ll never send. As I explain in my SleuthSayers article this week, this is in a grand tradition that includes such writers as Abraham Lincoln and Ben Franklin…

Dean Wesley Smith is an incredibly prolific writer. He writes with his cats. I write with my pooch. Dean is adept at writing into the dark at speed. In other words, he does not outline his work before writing and sets for himself some remarkable word—count challenges. In a book of his I recently read, Writing With the Waltese Falcon, he shows us how he wrote three books—one in ten days, one in seven, and one in five while traveling on vacation. That’s incredible. In a column I share on SleuthSayers, the mystery blog, this week, I do a quick overview of the book and then share the story of my one and only experiment writing at speed. I’ve shared that story on this blog a few years ago.

There’s a book about writing that I re-read every year. It does not teach whole lot of craft. But it does speak to the heart. It will probably speak to you, if you care about writing. It’s a classic book written by Brenda Ueland called If You Want to Write (affiliate link). I cannot remember how or when I first learned about it, but my wife and I bought a paperback copy ages ago, read and enjoyed it, and have re-read it over the years and even handed out copies to fellow writers as well. It’s an inspirational book first…

I attended a college graduation recently and got strangely emotional before the ceremony began. I started analyzing why, and I finally landed on the fact that I love learning, and haven’t stopped doing so, really, since I was a kid. I took out a notebook, started jotting down some thoughts, and before long I had the makings of an article on the topic that dips into nostalgia, yes, but also touches on a prophecy made by one of my professors way back in…

I have too many books, and I’ve grown to accept that I always will. When I first started reading, I always finished books that I bought or borrowed before buying another one. This used to be an unspoken rule of mine. It just felt like the smart thing to do. But somehow I took a wrong turn. It happened after college when I was living on my own. Slowly, I started buying books that I intended to read, brought them home, stuck them on a shelf somewhere, and never…