Death by Edits
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...
What Scares Me
Back in September I asked you all to suggest a topic for my newsletter, and a reader said they wanted to know what my fears are. Well, number one on that list is a fear of my cat taking over my newsletter (and based on the number of emails I got, Guff has a lot of new...
Dogz Drool
Hey. It's Guff here. Yeah, you know. The cat of the family. I'm taking over the blog post this month because Carter is too busy.Too busy, you ask? What could he possibly be too busy with that would make him delegate the task of writing his monthly blog post to his...
Halloween Scream Reel 2022
It's November, so that means it's time for the Halloween Scream Reel. I revealed in last month's newsletter that my theme this year was Disco Inferno, so basically I transformed my garage in a dance club located in hell. The main attraction was the...
And my Halloween theme is…
It's that lovely time of year ago when thoughts turn to scaring the hell out of little kids. Halloween!For my newer subscribers, you should know I'm kinda into this holiday. I remember, when I was a little kid, there would always be that ONE HOUSE that was the crazy...
Five Years of Cat Pics
I was interviewed the other day in a writers' workshop, and the topic was newsletters. I was asked how long I've been writing mine, and I answered three years. After the workshop, I went to check. And you know what? As of this month, it's been FIVE YEARS. I was...
New England is Creepy
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....
The Standalone Thriller
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...
Do Writers Socialize?
Do writers socialize? Hell yeah we do!Writing seems like such as solitary thing. There's the image of the novelist walking in the snowy woods to the single-room cabin, outfitted with only an ancient typewriter, a fireplace, an endless supply of coffee, and, of course,...
The First Line
Every now and then I'll get asked about writing the opening lines to my novels. How long do you toil over each of those words, making sure they're perfect? How often did you go back and change that first sentence? And how did you decide on the first line of The New...
