Over the past two years, I've been looking for a new writing desk. I had for over fifteen years a large desk with a hutch made from compressed board – see the picture below. During my ownership of that desk, I earned an MBA and wrote twelve novels, so I guess it had good karma. Now that my book business is my full-time job, I wanted a real wood desk. I use an empty bedroom and have the space to support a large desk, but I didn't want to spend a fortune on a new executive desk

I finally finished SICILIAN MURDER this past week! It will be released on Tuesday July 9th and it's available for pre-order here. I feel like I've spent the past eight months in Sicily as I've done so much research along the way for this book. I used Google Earth to travel down the highways and see what was on the roadside, or to see what businesses the average Sicilian small town has on its Main street. I feel like I intimately know the five different branches of law enforce

I'm a little more than a third of the way finished with my latest book, THE GIRL FROM DIANA PARK, book 3 in the Damian Green series. I've struggled with writing for the last few months for a variety of excuses, but knowing that they were excuses didn't move me beyond the wall of not writing. I finally found two things that jump-started my progress: a picture of a frowning Elmore Leonard and a mechanical keyboard. I added the words “Get your butt in the chair and write” to his

Bad Habits In early March, I had progressed to 7K words for the start of my newest novel - “The Girl From Diana Park”. It's book 3 of the Damian Green series. Then life happens; while hiking in the snow with a bum ankle, I stepped wrong torn what remaining ligaments I had in the ankle, broke my fibula, and then broke my hand when I landed on the ground in pain. I covered that accident in my last blog post. It sounds like the recovery period for these injuries would provide th

I began 2018 by carrying around a notebook with ten blank pages allocated to each of my next three books. I have a two sentence description of the book and my hope is if I start with ten pages of notes, I'll write faster. I'd like to publish three to four books this year! CRESCENT CITY MURDER (#1) is in the homestretch of creation with a planned finish date of the end of January. It's been a rocky writing session where I'll get bursts of brilliant scenes in my head, then suff

I'm 8,000 words into Crescent City Murder, book 8 in the Jill Quint series. I'm loving the story and enjoying my writing and learning more about New Orleans as story quirks arise. But a word of caution, never, ever, sit next to me in a bar. When I visited there last fall, I tried to talk to as many people as possible about life in New Orleans. It's my way of soaking up the culture with the thought of material for a future book. I spoke with my servers in restaurants, my barte

Finally after nineteen months CASTLE KILLING is finished. This book is the shortest story that took me the longest to write. Go figure. It took so long that I wondered if the Jill Quint series needed to end. What I discovered along the way was that it will continue! I have many more Jill Quint stories in my imagination. I've commented in the past about how location plays into my writing. Since my heritage is British-Irish and I've visited the UK several times, the inspiration

I’ve puzzled over the last year or so why is it taking me so long to write CASTLE KILLING, book seven in the Jill Quint series. I’ve been at it off and on for over a year. In fact, I released two Damian Green books while trying to work on CASTLE KILLING. I wondered if the Jill Quint series had run its course as I couldn't ponder a storyline beyond the first two chapters. I’ve decided it’s Location, Location, Location, as real estate agents say. Every book that I have written

Red Rock Island is schedule for publication on August 1, 2016. The manuscript is presently down under in Australia with my editor for final edits which will be returned to me next week. Amazon requires your final manuscript be on their system for ten days prior to publication. I think that’s to give them time to look for any banned material and perhaps to check for plagiarism. As part of my refreshing my imagination for the next book, I find myself doing a major home improvem