I’m a frustrated artist. I was into both painting and writing when I was a kid. When the time came to pick a college, I rolled the dice and went with a writing major. Guess it turned out okay, but I’m still strongly attracted to art of all kinds, especially illustrations. It’s a great form—often representational, but still demanding technical mastery.

A few months back, I did a post for SleuthSayers about how mystery writers can actually own a piece of art that once graced their stories in major mystery magazines. This is somewhat inside baseball, I admit, but it shakes down like this…

I’ve written before about the book recommendation site, Shepherd.com, which enlists the help of authors, not algorithms, to share great books with fellow readers. My wife, Denise Kiernan, shared a new list with Shepherd, which is up as today. It’s tied to her trio of books on the subject of Thanksgiving and gratitude. The list is entitled:

The best books on gratitude that make every day feel like Thanksgiving

All but one of the books she’s recommending are for adults. That makes four lists she’s contributed to Shepherd. The others are, in no particular order…

When a kid gets hooked on a topic like number patterns or math in nature, you just want to feed that excitement because you don’t know where it is going to lead. Teachers, parents, and librarians often ask me to recommend books about Fibonacci beyond my own.

To that end, I’ve compiled what I hope is a pretty good Fibonacci bibliography. It contains books for kids, adults, and even serious mathematicians. I’m parking this list on the blog with the expectation that I’ll revise it as new books come along. The link is easily shareable if you want to shoot it to a friend or colleague.

Some years ago, I told the story of how, as an adult, I reconnected with a writer I’d loved as a kid. The writer was Clifford B. Hicks, who penned a fun series about a kid inventor named Alvin Fernald. The series ran for 10 books, and inspired a Wonderful World of Disney TV movie.

I didn’t realize when I moved to North Carolina that Mr. Hicks lived about 40 minutes away. I wrote him a note and we exchanged a few emails, never meeting before he passed away.

I revisited the story a few months ago in a blog post I did for SleuthSayers. I think it’s little tighter than my previous take on the story. If you are looking for a wholesome mystery series to get a kid—probably a boy—hooked, you might want to…

As a follow-up to Denise’s book birthday announcement yesterday, I thought I’d share two articles I have written in the past on the subject of Edgar Allan Poe and his editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, the so-called Mother of Thanksgiving. It’s an interesting story because Hale in the 19th century Hale was the editor of the largest magazine in nation. And it was a women’s magazine, exclusively.

Poe is not known for writing for women, specifically, or even men, but scaring the shinola out of all genders equally…

My wife, Denise Kiernan, launches a new book today. This title marks the third book in a row that she has written on the subject of Thanksgiving and gratitude. The first was for adults, the second was a picture book for little kids, and the new one is for middle grade students.

Up front, let me say that these books have very little to do with the retelling of the story of the Pilgrims and their encounter with Native Americans in 1621. That story has been told about as many times as it has been debunked.

No—Denise’s books focus primarily on how Thanksgiving became a holiday in the United States. It’s centered on the fascinating story of Sarah Josepha Hale, an influential 19th-century magazine editor who lobbied five U.S. presidents to get Turkey Day declared as an official federal holiday. All the presidents ignored her but one: Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War that nearly destroyed a nation…

It’s also probably the only recent book that tells the somewhat unbelievable story of the bizarre bond between the dainty, so-called Mother of Thanksgiving, and America’s first creepmeister, Edgar Allan Poe! I won’t spoil it for you.

Here are all the books in one place. Please to look! Please to buy!

I received confirmation late yesterday that Amazon had finally resolved the issue in which one of my book covers went missing, and was replaced with the image of a stack of mens’ trousers. (See image below.)

I carefully clicked through to all of Amazon’s international stores to make sure that what the KDP rep was telling me was accurate. It was.

All told, the problem took from 9/8/23 to 9/24/23 to resolve. So I only had to look like an idiot—and lose potential sales—for 16 days!

Today I’m talking about my dog over at the SleuthSayers blog for mystery writers. Writing about one’s pet probably does’t strike you as having anything to do with the mystery genre, but allow me to blow your mind with a few things. The Doberman breed, in particular, has strong ties to the military and law enforcement, in real life and fiction.

That’s one reason I hope you’ll stop by to check out my post.

The other reason is, yay, cute dogs! Ours is just over a year old, which means he is still very puppy-like in his looks and behavior, though growing fast…

This will date me. I majored in magazine journalism in college, intending to work for big glossy magazine back when they were still relevant. The biggest and richest still are. The smaller ones struggle, or have evaporated. Still, I’m amazed by the variety of publications I see when I open the Apple News app on my phone, or scroll the magazines available via my Magzter app. I love browsing the magazine racks at Barnes & Noble, or Hudson News when I’m passing through airports. But seriously, how many of us know where we can find a solid newsstand anymore? They used to be ubiquitous when print was king.

About a decade after I went freelance, my old writing professor asked me to speak to his class of magazine journalism students. We kept trying to find time when I’d be able to fly up from North Carolina to Syracuse. I never did. But I did write the following memo, which I sent, and he distributed to his students. I offer now because beyond that one sharing, it’s never seen the light of day…

When writing short stories, I focus on the plot, characters, and the setting of the world I’m creating. I tell it as well as I possibly can in the moment, and devote time afterward “polishing” that first draft.

On most stories, it typically takes me two to three days to reach the second draft phase. From there, it depends how much more time I’ll tinker with it.

Am I completely satisfied with it? If yes, then I stop and submit the piece to a market.

If not, more tinkering…