The Book Argument

Both ebooks and paper books have their positives and negatives - and it is up to a reader to decide which platform best suits their reading taste.

If Anyone Learns Anything

I refuse to assume readers cannot (or do not wish to) learn. If anyone learns anything from what they read of the writing, I feel I have accomplished something worthwhile...

Readers Around The Globe

Writing for a public audience is now in ways perhaps more "intimidating" than ever - because anyone in the world can be reading it within seconds.

This Town

And so many wonder from where authors get inspiration and ideas? That has been a question I have long found amusing.

“The Memory Keeper”

She opens with recollections of being a sixteen year old American – from Pittsburgh – who finds herself living (due to Dad’s job) for a year in the mid-1970s in São Paulo, Brazil…

When That Book Is, You Feel, Uh, Not Great

One and two were red flags, and three was a personal turn off. From just those introductory pages I knew the book would not be for me. And I felt awful for feeling that way.

“Look Inside”

As writers we do have to nod to the reality that many - probably most - readers now read books differently than was the norm in the past. They are not in a favorite chair before a roaring fireplace undisturbed while immersed in that single leather volume in their lap...

A Kindle Peek

I wrote Conventions: The Garden At Paris imagining there might be two further volumes someday - all of them to be stand alone novels each of which may be read on its own. But each book has proven such a massive writing undertaking that for now I feel I have yet again largely run out of steam: I'm exhausted. So it's two books. As for a third? I hope so. We'll see.

“To take her Ladyship’s praise…”

"I keep getting rejected, so my writing can't be good enough.”

Uh, not necessarily; and, in fact, that is probably decidedly NOT so.

Now It Is 100 Years

I've set my phone alarm for just before 11am on Sunday. We should just take that moment at least and remember.

The Reach

Here’s one for the Department of "If You Think No One Is Paying Attention, You’re Wrong."

“Everyone writes books these days…”

Certainly more people now than ever are able to write and reach an audience; and overall that is a good thing. But "everyone writes books these days?"

Another “Throwing Spaghetti Against The Wall” Month

If you wish to write a novel, don't waste time "throwing spaghetti against the wall" this month just to see what sticks.

“When a twenty-one year old New Yorker sails for Europe in 1787…”

She was the first (after my wife) to see the rough draft of Passports. I had written it in secret – and, it seemed, usually at “4 o’clock in the mornings” – during 2012-2013...

“From one End of this Continent to the other”

Happy U.S. Independence . . . weekend! Future U.S. president John Adams, who had persuaded the younger and largely unknown Virginian Thomas Jefferson to draft the independence declaration because - among other reasons - Jefferson had a knack with a quill, had foreseen almost exactly what independence day would develop into as a national holiday: …