The Thanksgiving story that pops into the heads of most Americans involves a myth regarding early Massachusetts settlers called Pilgrims and Native Americans called Wampanoags. It’s a problematic story that has caused the American Thanksgiving holiday to come under fire for decades. Which is a shame, because Thanksgiving is not a bad idea for a holiday. Other nations have done well with it. Here in the USA, we foolishly linked it to a poorly understood 404-year-old historical event. My wife, New York Times bestselling author Denise Kiernan, published a book about this issue some years ago. Some of the stuff I learned during the writing of that book forms the basis for my SleuthSayers post today. The post is entitled…

It’s Halloween, which reminds us all that death is a thing! Sometimes those who die are writers, which raises an interesting dilemma. In the US and other countries, the copyright on the work of a creative person survives 70 years past their death. That’s both good and bad. Good because…

As far back as 2010 bookstores, book clubs, and other orgs started asking my wife and I to talk to various groups about the publishing business. We started most of those events by reading off a list of book industry statistics, just to give wannabe authors a sense of what they were up against.

• A third of the U.S. population leaves high school and never reads a book again in their lives.

• Forty percent of college grads never crack a book after getting their sheepskin.

• More than 70 percent of Americans have not entered a bookstore in the last year.

So why on earth would you…

Even before I wrote for a living, I read and absorbed the advice that dropped from the lips of writers. I’ve amassed a collection of these gems on my hard drive over the years. This week, in honor of the back-to-school mentality that permeates my soul at this time of year, I thought I’d dig in the files and see if any of the quotes I’ve saved actually makes sense, decades after I collected them.

You know what I discovered? The oldest quotes are the most useless. The one I harvested earlier this year is gold. And I would have expected better from the talented writers and creatives who uttered these words.

The words of wisdom come from people such as…

I’ve written another article about dogs, this time about how dogs are used in various ways the world over to help humans. They are, as I point out, probably the second most employed species on the planet. This article builds on the premise I laid a few weeks ago at SleuthSayers, the mystery blog, when I shared some fun facts about dog noses. If you love dogs, you will want to check this story out.

The post is called…

I’m over at SleuthSayers, the mystery blog, today, talking how dogs and humans came to be pals, and other amazing facts about canine noses. I don’t think you’ll want to miss it if you are a dog lover.

The post is called…

Next year is the 250th anniversary of the United States, which means it is necessarily also the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence. I know a lot about that document, thanks to the research I did several years ago to write a book about the signers of that hallowed document. Today, I’m talking about a lesser-known individual associated with the Declaration—Timothy Matlack—the man who actually hand-wrote the document that all the Congressmen signed…

For a guy who is not a designer, I sure am obsessed with fonts. I have been since the late eighties, when a designer I worked with at Scholastic enjoyed pointing out how much choosing the right typeface could immediately alter or enhance an article I was preparing for publication.

I go font shopping from time to time to help me nail the look of a particular project Denise and I are working on on the side.

My go-to websites are myfonts and Fontspring, but I have been known to buy direct, which is how I came across the work of Brian Wilson, a typeface designer and novelist who is renowned…

Every year I put together a questionnaire that we send out to organizations that inquire about having one of us come speak. (My wife gets the majority of those requests.)

I’m planning a future article for writers on this very topic, and realized that it would be hand to make the questionnaire available.

Here’s how to get it…

I spent a stupid amount of time over the holidays consuming advice for authors in the form of articles, podcasts, and videos. Some of it was actually helpful. A lot of it was just nonsense designed to a) make you insecure, and b) spend money on whatever service the person doing the spouting was selling. Since the rise of self-publishing, a LOT of people are marketing courses and software for writers. I jumped for a lot of those things at the beginning, thinking it would give me the edge. But I’ve soured on most of it.

My latest post for SleuthSayers, the mystery writers blog, shows what happens when stuff annoys me…