I’m a person who frequently comes off as absent-minded. THIS IS WHY. At any given moment of the day, I’m thinking to myself:

How can I fix the story I’m working on?

What problem have I created for myself that is going to crop up down the line?

How can it make the characters, the story, the scenes better?

I’ve got two drawers in our office filled with bookmarks. The publishers print ’em up for my wife’s books, so I dutifully mail them to people whenever we send out a book or a bookplate. And if I’m anywhere near the table when Denise does signings, I always slip a bookmark into the reader’s book before they leave the table. Why? Because I hate the damn things, and I can’t wait to get rid of them. Thanks to my efforts, I predict we will finally finish them all by 2063.

Here’s what I think authors should be carrying in their pockets instead…

Among my parents’ personal effects, my brother found the photo I’m sharing today. It depicts me and my first-grade classmate, Michelle, putting on a play in our classroom.

Of all the essays I wrote in elementary school, the one that sticks in my memory is one in which I hilariously describe myself as “puppet crazy”!

How crazy was I? Well, let’s see…

One of my short story collections—Arm of Darkness—went live Tuesday afternoon in the Apple Audiobooks store. This is the first piece of my fiction to go live for readers who prefer to consume books that way.

So that’s one cool thing. You can check out the book right here, and buy it outright for $4.99.

The second cool thing is somewhat, well, complicated…

I’ve been ghostwriting so long that I often feel like I’m living inside the sausage factory that is modern American publishing. Unless you’ve spent time inside the machine, you are likely to think that it’s a really big deal to get a book deal. It can be, but if you spent any time with authors you’ll quickly find that most of them hate the way their publisher handled their last book. Not enough promotion. Not enough support. Not enough…anything.

A few months ago, I told the story of the most egregious example of publisher-fail I’d ever seen. And this was for a book that the publisher paid six figures for…

This town keeps coming up with food options. And since Covid, that thing of mine, and a new puppy, I just haven’t been seeking them out the way I used to.

But now I’m back!

…went to Regina’s Comfort Classics Friday morning and chowed down on some tasty stuff. That stretch of road on Patton Ave keeps changing. I had the chicken and waffle, something I’d been blabbing about having for a week since I looked up the menu. Steve had the breakfast sandwich—sausage, egg, and cheese on a biscuit. That came with seasoned fries…

You’ve written a book. Yay you, writer guy. But now you’ve got to sell it. You’ve got to market the heck out of it. Those two things may well seem mutually exclusive. You wrote a book because you’re at heart a quiet, contemplative sort of fellow. A person who thinks a lot about words. But to market, you must now assume the persona of a dude striding down the street in full marching band dress, pounding a drum. There’s an irreconcilable disconnect at the heart of your endeavor. Which are you—a mousy writer dude, or an attention-seeking whack job?

Well, you’re both.

One of the most charming and fascinating books for kids during the 1980s was Masquerade, by Kit Williams. At first glance, it was just another children’s picture book. On a deeper level, however, it was a map to a jewel-encrusted treasure buried somewhere in England. All you had to do was study the gorgeous illustrations for clues that would lead you to the spot where the author—a consummate illustrator, sculptor, clockmaker, and wizard—had hidden a golden amulet in the shape of the book’s protagonist, Jack Hare.

Spiedies are a regional food phenom centered primarily in the city of Binghamton, New York. Back in 1998, I pitched and sold a story on spiedies to a slick national food magazine. They paid me and my expenses quickly, but never ran the story. It was officially, mercilessly dead. Until now…

Some time ago, one of my fellow bloggers over at SleuthSayers confessed his love for the 1998 Coen Bros. classic film, The Big Lebowski. I read my fellow author’s post, and jumped in a few weeks later with my own reminiscence of my days in Italy, watching that movie over and over again with Italian subtitles. The movie was called Il Grande Lebowski, and now I have lines of dialogue—in both English and Italian—stuck in my brain forever.

Long Live Il Drugantibus!