If you are a writer who works with an agent, you probably ought to embrace bifurcation. That means that any royalty payments due you by your publisher comes directly to your bank account instead of taking bizarre zigzag to your agent’s account first. My wife and I have bifurcated our payments with numerous publishers, and the process isn’t too onerous. I spell out the process, step by step today at SleuthSayers, the mystery blog, in a post entitled…

I hate reading those articles that insist “Every writer needs to do THIS!” or “If you’re not doing X, you’re doomed to fail as a writer!” But I may have just written that article. About two years ago, when I was on a research trip with my wife, I read a book that I have had my eye on for years. It’s one of those books about writing that kept popping up on my radar, called [affiliate link throughout this article] The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield.

I’m talking about about this today at SleuthSayers, the mystery blog, in a post entitled,

The Pressfield Synchronicities!

As I explain in the post, once I read the book, which I found fascinating, I kept running into people who either had read it or have been meaning to read it, or needed to read it. You probably need to read it, too. Here’s why..

Are you a writer? Why not turn your book cover or covers into irresistible matchbook art?

A few years ago, I started seeing a cute item in gift shops around town: matchbooks designed to look like vintage book covers. Somehow two of these ended up in our house, lingering near our stash of candles in the living room. At $7 or $8 a pop, I hate to think we bought them. Maybe they were gifts.

But upon close inspection, I saw that they were handmade and thus theoretically makeable by, well, me. Specifically, I wanted to be able to make matchbooks featuring my books, and not John Steinbeck’s or Margaret Mitchell’s or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s.

I tinkered around at the craft bench, and produced a few using my covers and a few covers of books written by my crime fiction writer friends. Here’s how you can do the same…

I told you about my new short story on Tuesday, and promised I’d have an update for you by the end of the week. Today I’m sharing an in-depth article about the research that went into the story. You can find that article at SleuthSayers, the mystery blog, at the following link…

I have a short story in a new anthology that is published today! I’m excited to tell you about it because, believe it or not, it’s my first appearance in a fiction anthology. The book is a collection of 24 short stories by 24 different writers who contribute to the SleuthSayers mystery blog that I am always crowing about here…

Every couple of months I get a letter from someone asking if I’ll ghost-write their book. Typically, my correspondents are white, wealthy, business dudes. They’ve made something of themselves, and they want to share their hard-earned wisdom with the world. They think a book is the ticket, but they have no idea where to start. Someone told them they need a ghostwriter, and they start writing people like me. I got one of those emails recently, but this time it had a more interesting wrinkle. Besides asking about my services, the guy also wondered aloud if he should just self-publish the damn thing, and not bother trying to get a “real” publisher. This was a switch. Here’s why…

It’s a great month to be American, folks! The ebook versions of the two history books I wrote with my wife, Denise Kiernan, are on sale across all platforms. For the entire month of February, you’ll be able to pick up each book for $2.99. Bosom buddies Samuel Adams and John Hancock can’t stop nodding their Huzzahs in assent!

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…

The popularity of the 2023 movie Oppenheimer has brought national attention once again to the Manhattan Project. My wife, who wrote a book about the subject, routinely gets emails from fans asking how they can find out definitively if a family member worked on the project during wartime. Here’s her response…

I’ve slowly been sharing all the old posts I’ve written over at SleuthSayers during the time I fell off the edge of the world and disappeared. With today’s post, I’ll be finally caught up. In a sense, I’ve saved the best for last. Back in fall, I wrote about one of my favorite childhood books, and how I finally figured out why it moved me as much as it did way back when.

The book I’m talking about is called From the Mix-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg. And if you haven’t read it, how can you call yourself a grown-up child?