Blog
My Thanks
…because in the publishing world, yes, these things do help.
Read MoreMaking Sense of It (the edit)
As I’ve said any number of times, my first drafts are awful, more like expanded outlines than an actual novel. Mostly, they’re a way to confirm the machinery of the plot before I buckle down to craft a sensible narrative out of contradictory notes, half-baked characterizations, and half-seen sub-plots. (No modesty here: they really are…
Read MoreMeeting the characters
I’m working my way through the final proof pages of Castle Shade (out in three months—hooray!) …which means reading every word aloud, watching for mistakes and, more important, listening for oddities. I can only manage 50 or 60 pages a day, but I am finding small errors on nearly half the pages, even though it’s…
Read MoreThe Senses and Riviera Gold
A recent discussion about my next contract (and how long it would be before I could jaunt off to Paris, sigh…) had me reflecting on how dependent I am on the use of the senses to provide what writers call the “telling detail.” I have a scene in Castle Shade (no, I’m not going to give…
Read MoreFired up, thanks.
You may have heard that we have a fire going on here in Santa Cruz. Fires are, unfortunately, not unusual in California—generally in October, when the dry season is dragging on. But fires are now an annual, close, pressing presence, all over the state. For a quarter of the year, every year, our lives have…
Read MoreYes: Black Lives Matter (4)
Defund the police? White people now know what this country’s Black citizens have known for a very long time: if you’re Black, you don’t phone the police if you need help. The scenes that are playing out on our tv screens night after night reflect a tragic irony: if you ask a cop why they…
Read MoreThe Bronze Pour
One of the joys of writing crime stories is the wild variety of research projects that come along. In Riviera Gold, that includes bronze casting. And what do you know—there’s a foundry right here in Santa Cruz. Sean Monaghan and Courtney Scruggs of Bronze Works made me welcome, let me poke around, and invited me…
Read MoreIt never gets old
I’ve had a lot of my own books hit my hands. With 28 novels and dozens of books containing my shorter contribution, I’ve received a lot of hardbacks with my name on the cover. But in case you’re wondering, no: it never gets old. I still open the box or envelope and pull the weight…
Read MoreSara and Gerald Murphy: the art of the family
One of the great pleasures I have in researching books—okay, I admit, it’s not quite as much fun as the travel side of research…but a pleasure nonetheless—is getting to know some of the true-life characters of the time and place the book is to be set. Take Sara and Gerald Murphy. I knew of them,…
Read MoreDEADLY Pub Day!
Deadly Anniversaries comes out today! (And congratulations, Ellen, Richard, and Pat—you’ve won the hardback!) When the Great War began, in August of 1914, the British Army had about 250,000 regulars. It took time to train new troops, and in the Kaiser’s first push, the Brits would have been hard put to hold fast, but within…
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