The Soundtrack to Everything
When I sent the initial draft of Believe in Me out to a handful of early readers, I enclosed a CD containing the novel’s soundtrack, a set of 20 songs that complement the action
I Am Not A Critic
Of all the conversations I’ve had in recent weeks around the book I’ll be publishing early next year – My Heart Sings the Harmony: Twenty Years of Writing About Music – the
Sequel
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. – John Lennon, “Beautiful Boy,” 1980. For quite a while now I’ve been certain that the next book I p
Travel = Fuel
It’s possible to write quality fiction without ever leaving your home turf—many notable authors have spent a chunk of their career writing about a single, specific region—but
Leave a Mark
Write what you know, they say. And that’s all well and good—my own personal history definitely helped me bring the musical and political elements of Believe in Me to life. But
The Bookshelf Diaries (An Occasional Series): Peter Heller, Tom Rachman, Michael Connelly
Sometimes I go backward, sometimes forward. A nudge from Amazon a while back led me to investigate Peter Heller’s engrossing novel The Painter. Heller writes literary fiction, in
Herding Cats
Inspiration is something you can’t force or predict; it comes when it comes. Given the frequent presence in my writing space of my own feline menagerie (population: 3), I can’t
Quiet Hours
The thing about the quiet hours that spin out, sometimes feeling endless, between published work is that it only looks from the outside like nothing is happening. Even in the quiet
Parenthood: An Appreciation
On my way home from work last Thursday, the night the Parenthood series finale was broadcast, I noticed a bumper sticker on the slightly banged-up Toyota in front of me: “Life is
Twelve Months, Cover to Cover
The year gone by was full of milestones small and large: gains and losses, advances and retreats, triumphs and struggles. It was a year worthy of a novel, though I didn’t write o