In the immortal words of David Byrne, how did I get here? The path I’ve taken in becoming an author of novels, short stories, and screenplays (along with industrial scripts, narrative nonfiction articles, academic papers, advertising copy, and various business documents I’ve been tasked with composing) is certainly ongoing, but began the day as child […]
As work progresses in 2013, every month or so I’ll post an update. — DOGS OF PARSONS HOLLOW (novel) After a fast and somewhat mysterious rejection from Simon & Schuster, the MS is currently at Penguin Group, where the longer it stays the better: these things take time. I persuaded an agent, Michelle L. Johnson, who persuaded […]
Readers of my Saturday Evening Post short story finalist ‘Trailer Trash‘ (a version of which also currently appears in Petigru Review, the journal of the SC Writer’s Workshop) have not only told me what a vivid picture I paint of my young protagonist’s ordeal in extreme housecleaning, but also in my scene-setting during the story’s […]
As I suspect many authors also experience, since my career’s started gaining some traction I get asked more often by aspiring writers for advice—to read pages, usually, or simply to give them some sort of insight or ‘secret’ to getting published. I can’t do that, though, mainly because there isn’t one surefire route to publication, only a […]
I came across this blog post yesterday, and felt compelled to propagate these very useful writing concepts from the lauded German author W. G. ‘Max’ Sebald, a likely Nobel winner had he lived to receive the honor. Credit to poster Richard Skinner (and, of course, David Lambert & Robert McGill, who took Sebald’s workshop and […]
Michelle L Johnson is a woman of many talents, and here we see her fine efforts to put on this auction in support of the ailing SC Writer’s Workshop, the details of which may be read in this prior post. A terrific effort, and for such a good cause. It’s a bad time for the […]
Here’s the grim news: this the bad economy has hit the venerable SC Writer’s Workshop annual conference in the pocketbook, and in a serious way. This is one of the most well-run and -respected writer’s conferences in the country, and while they will be sure to figure out a way to soldier on with the […]
As this article makes so dreadfully clear, my novel DOGS OF PARSONS HOLLOW, about a woman’s crusade against the backwoods dogfighters she discovers living next door to her new country home, features a platform and basis very much rooted in reality. As the author of a novel that makes clear its moral stance when it […]
It’s not every day a writer gets an invite like this one: — In its nearly three centuries of existence, The Saturday Evening Post has published short fiction by a who’s who of American authors including F. Scott Fitzgerald; Dorothy Parker; William Faulkner; Agatha Christie; Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; Ray Bradbury; Louis L’Amour; Sinclair Lewis; Jack London; Ann […]
With a number of awards and advancement opportunities coming my way, 2012 landed for this humble independent writer as a creative and professional benchmark: As a now-agented author with a new small press novel in print and another extremely commercial MS resting on publisher’s row hard drives, the possibility is strong that I’ll soon land a […]
