When the troublemaking brother of the man in prison for a drunken crash that killed their parents is found stabbed to death in their restaurant, everyone in the small Irish village of Kilbane assumes it was one of the O’Sullivan clan who did him in. The blame falls squarely on oldest brother James, a hot-tempered […]
Last Day As a Full-Time Teacher
More than a quarter of a century ago, literally in a previous millenium, I interviewed for a job at a school I’d grown up hating. Having lived in south Parkersburg all my life and being an alumnus of Parkersburg South High School, the idea of working at Parkersburg High School was completely unthinkable. But I […]
He’s a Little Different
I’ve read detective fiction for as long as I’ve been able to read, practically. I started with the classics: Holmes, Queen, Marple, Poirot. But then I picked up a new classic: Spenser. I’ve read others in the genre, including other characters created by Robert B. Parker. Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, and Parker’s Western heroes, Virgil […]
Review of A MAN CALLED OVE
I recently went with Sarah to see the latest Tom Hanks movie, A Man Called Otto. All I knew was the little I could glean from the trailer and that people were upset because they had changed the titular character’s name from Ove to Otto. Well, and that it stars Tom Hanks, which is good enough […]
Good Friends, Good Food, part two
Last week, I talked about two fantastic restaurants my friends the Delgados took me to while I visited them in Georgia. Today, I complete the journey. The places I’m going to tell you about are definitely all on my list of places I must return to the next time I’m there. I’m going out of […]
Good Friends, Good Food, part one
When my good friends the Delgados moved to Georgia, it was definitely a sad time. I worked with Jonathan as one of his volunteers for our church’s youth group and Maria, known only to me as Pepper Potts, was, for all intents and purposes, my writing muse. She almost knows the characters in my books […]
WIP Wednesday!
Here’s a new excerpt from the book I’m doing heavy revisions on. And I mean heavy. Even the location is new. And so are the characters. Don’t be confused when you read, because names have been changed. But the characters are different in ways that go beyond their names. At any rate, here is a […]
Important Announcement
Book titles are an interesting phenomenon. Some are strictly utilitarian–they are literally descriptive in some way, like Robert B. Parker’s The Godwulf Manuscript or Looking for Rachel Wallace or Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Others are all or part of a phrase or sentence drawn straight out […]
Work-in-Progress Wednesday
Here’s another excerpt from my first ever book, only completely new. It’s a soft-boiled detective book narrated by my younger, smarter, more talented alter ego, Harry Shalan Private Eye. Hope you’ll let me know what you think! Stultz was there but not all there when I got to his room in the ER, trailed by […]
(Re-)Work In Progress
As you know if you’ve been following my blog for a bit that I’m doing major renovations on my previously written books in preparation for re-launching the whole series. If these books were houses, I would be doing a complete gut job, taking them clear down to the studs and, other than leaving the basic […]