My cousin Deon doesn’t email often, so when a message from her lands in my mailbox, I open it with curiosity. Some time ago Deon wrote to recommend a book. Knowing I read about serial killers, she thought I might enjoy David Rose’s The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice. The stocking […]
In his legal thriller Defending Elton, TJ Cooke takes on formidable challenges. First, his protagonist is a British solicitor who sets out to frame a mentally challenged client, Elton, for a murder that he himself committed. How can readers sympathize with a guy like that? Yet Cooke succeeds in evoking not just a grudging understanding […]
Thirty years ago Joe and I lived in a beautiful house overlooking a lake. It was his second year of teaching at Eastern Illinois University. Uncertain whether we would settle permanently in Charleston, we leased the place from a professor on sabbatical. The house had an unpaved driveway that wound steeply downward to a gravel […]
I get too many ideas for stories, more than I have time to write. How to choose among them? I take the ones that call to both my head and my heart. An unusual premise might interest me, but unless it comes with a character I care about or moves toward some kind of emotional […]
I read Sherwin B. Nuland’s How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter while doing research for my novel TALION. I’d never seen anyone die—not yet, anyway—and I needed a clinical account of the process. Nuland explains what happens in the body as life ends. In each chapter he covers a different manner of death: heart […]
An entrepreneur at heart, my father owned and operated more than a dozen small businesses in his lifetime, two or three at a time. Since he liked spending money and always needed more, he also sold cars for various dealerships in Heber, Utah, where he lived. He was a terrific saleman. He won national prizes […]
I’ve been tagged by Lania Knight for The Next Big Thing blog hop. Jump over to Lania’s blog and read about her coming-of-age novella, Three Cubic Feet. Then come on back to read about my work in progress. What is the working title of your book? Right now it’s Daemon Seer. It’s the sequel to […]
I’m thrilled and proud to announce that Talion has been listed on Awesome Indies. Established and administered by Australian author Tahlia Newland, the site accepts only independently published books vetted by a reliable reviewer or industry professional. Newland began Awesome Indies out of frustration with the wildly uneven quality of Indie books. As she frankly puts […]
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” — Oscar Wilde My husband, the always perceptive Joe Heumann, recently pointed to an alarming pattern in my TV obsessions. The shows that hook me have disturbing elements in common. Crime and violence. Lots and lots of violence. A lead character who […]
Don’t miss Rachelle Ayala’s latest book, Hidden Under her Heart (A Story of Abortion and Courage), available for a short time at the introductory price of $0.99. About the novel Maryanne Torres is a compassionate nurse who fails at relationships. After a string of losers, she swears off premarital sex, hoping to land a marrying […]
Many writers, when asked why they write, answer that they must. They feel compelled by some inner need. I am one of these writers, yet I wonder if compulsion is a good enough reason. It explains all kinds of behaviors, some of them unsavory. After all, addicts take drugs because they must. Obsessions are irrational […]
I was half asleep when my husband put on one of my favorite CDs, Nude and Rude: The Best of Iggy Pop. You might figure the aural assault of “Search and Destroy” or the pounding beat of “Lust for Life” would wake me up, but I drowsed through both songs. It was Iggy’s haunting and […]
