I pride myself on making kids scream. That’s my thing. Every Halloween, I turn my garage into a chamber of psychological warfare, complete with fog, lights, eerie soundscapes, and strategically timed jump scares. I spend weeks fine-tuning it, because nothing brings me...
I’ve been posting blogs for seven years (my very first was September 2017) and it dawned on me recently: I’ve never written an essay about my agent. Which is weird, because Pam (Ahearn) has been in my life for 21 years. Hell, that’s longer than most marriages. I found...
Writers are fucking weird. That’s probably why I love talking to them so much. We’re solitary by nature, prone to obsession, usually carrying a few psychological idiosyncrasies that we’ve either turned into art or denial. But sit two of us down with...
(Note: This following is best read in the internal voice of an angry old man yelling at kids skateboarding in his driveway.) Goddamnit. A.I. is taking over the world and I hate it. I hate A.I. because, by and large, it makes life easier, and things that are easy don’t...
Happy New Year! My new thriller, Tell Me What You Did, will be out on January 28. This is an angry, scary book that’s gotten a lot of pre-release attention—more so than any of my earlier nine releases—and I can’t wait to see what happens with it. Like most of my...
People are always surprised when they find out book titles are often not the title the author used. Looking back, my publisher changed the title of five of my nine books. And that’s okay! I’ve long since learned not to get attached to my working title, and often I’ll...
I did a talk and book signing last weekend at a charity event, and the organizers had five of my eight novels available for sale. During the signing, readers would scan the available titles and inevitably pose this question to me: "Which of these books is your...
A book comes alive in editing. Unfortunately, editing sucks.Editing is the time where you have face hard truths about your book, and as tempting as it is to tell yourself, ah, it's fine, the reality is without putting in serious post-first-draft work, your book will...
I remember thinking about New England when I set out to write my 2018 thriller Mister Tender's Girl. I don't outline so I didn't yet know the plot of the book, but I'd decided the entirety of the story would take place over the two weeks leading up to Halloween....
I have eight books published, and they are all standalone thrillers. By standalone, I mean none of my books is part of a series (though The New Neighbor and The Dead Husband have very direct ties to one another.) In case you haven't noticed, series...
