[This post is a modified version of my December 7, 2013 guest post for The Children’s Book Review. (http://www.thechildrensbookreview.com/)]     “What do you want to be when you grow up?”     As adults we seem to love this question, though we know better than to hold kids to their answers. The expected responses […]

Samantha Sutton and the Labyrinth of Lies has been out in the world for almost a year. Winter of the Warrior Queen is all but finished, and almost completely out of my hands.   It’s only now, in doing research for Samantha’s third adventure, that I’ve come across the concept of multilocation: an idea, shared […]

I’m only a little embarrassed to admit how much I’ve enjoyed all the recent royal brouhaha.  At least I’m not alone.  As some British friends seem so desperate to point out, we Americans might be more excited about this frenzy of non-news than His Future Majesty’s eventual subjects.   And yes, the reaction is disproportionate […]

I like listening to music when I write – and have to when I edit.  And while Andres Segovia, Hans Zimmer, Hector Berlioz, and pre-2000’s U2 can accompany most any writing session, there are some times where I need a region-specific playlist to keep my mind on task.   For Labyrinth of Lies, it was […]

The Tagxedo image on the right – with exactly two  modifications to eliminate spoilers – shows the most frequently used words in “Samantha Sutton and the Winter of the Warrior Queen,” which will be out in a only a few months.   A quick comparison to the “Labyrinth” graphic does show some changes to my writing […]

I came across a hilarious post on From the Mixed-Up Files about identifying and eliminating word repetition. I, too, use word clouds to edit, and have found it to be a useful – if slightly unsettling* – experience.   Writing a manuscript in fits and spurts over a period of years – or, say, in […]

An agent friend of mine has the perfect term for a certain kind of novel.  Loosely defined, the “eat-your-vegetables-book” is a textbook disguised as fiction: the kind so overloaded with lessons or facts that no kid would choose to read it on their own.   I didn’t set out to write this kind of novel […]

Samantha Sutton and the Labyrinth of Lies came together over a period of several years.  Sections were written, deleted, and resurrected again in my tiny Washington DC studio, in my girlfriend’s (now wife’s) tiny London flat, in our tiny New York City one-bedroom, and in the tiniest of all Parisian chambres de bonne.   Other […]

The international papers had predicted trouble: a riot, perhaps, or a coup, or even civil war.   But Lima’s airport seemed empty the morning of my arrival. If the revolution had started, I figured, it was kicking off at the Casa de Pizarro some eight miles away – where, after a contested election and some […]

She’s newly five-years-old in the grainy home video but still there’s no mistaking her, holding court at her birthday party among a dozen of her friends.   The festivities have reached an inflection point. Through the sliding glass door, the camera catches a glimpse of Misty the Pony being led away by her owner, off […]