Had lunch with a buddy of mine a while back. I’d just signed my book deal(s), and we’re sitting there talking about how everything had come about. He recognized, I think, that getting to this point was a major achievement. Lunch was long gone, our empty plates whisked away by…

Since signing my publishing contracts, I’ve gotten several Twitter DMs and a couple of Facebook messages, essentially offering congratulations and then asking for publishing advice. It’s so weird that people think I know what I’m doing, when I clearly have no idea. Suddenly I’m an expert? I enjoy being congratulated…

Don’t blame me for Mrs. Holland’s prematurely gray hair. It was like that when I first entered her classroom at Enterprise Junior High School in the fall of 1984. I swear. I’m sure I didn’t help. I cared not a whit for schoolwork, and flat-out refused to do homework. Everyone…

I woke up to the best news in the world on January 1, 2021: British publisher Close to the Bone offered me a contract for my novel, Magic City Blues. Included in the offer was a publication date of Feb. 25, 2022. I was, as you can imagine, walking on…

I don’t know where to start. 2020 was a terrible year. I’ve absolutely hated most of it, what with 330,000 Americans dead from Covid-19 (and that number is still climbing). I’ve missed my friends, and my family, and normal life in general. The fact that Covid cases are spiking here…

Here’s a bit of a follow-up to my last post, where I talked about reaching writing goals for the year, hopefully with some important lessons learned. At this moment, I’m still waiting on responses for three of my stories. Suspense has a story called ‘Disappeared,’ while new publication Cheap Imitation…

First, I want to stipulate that 2020 has been absolute garbage: Wildfires. Worldwide pandemic. Murder hornets. More unarmed Black people killed by cops. Peaceful protests. Riots. Poisonings of political enemies. And yet. And yet. I’ve had my most successful year, fiction-wise, which kind of blows my mind. I know that…

This is a mostly personal post. I made some serious changes in 2019, and I want to keep them going in 2020. So here are a few resolutions to keep me back on track for the new year. First of all, writing resolutions: Write every day. Nita Tyndall pointed out…

Editor’s note: This story is based around true events that happened when I was a child. The house in the story still exists, maybe 100 yards from my parents’ house, though its roof has split like rotted fruit and it’s been overtaken by trees and brush so that hardly any…