I’m going to be frank. I’ve been struggling to write lately. Specifically, I’ve been struggling to get myself to work on a new draft of my first Jamie and Pip Halloran Mystery, which I wanted to think of as a complete re-imagining of my old first book, Harsh Prey. It felt a little too much […]
It’s a surprisingly cool morning here at my house for this time of year. I’m just praying the temperate conditions hold out until Saturday for my daughter’s wedding. As life is about to get pretty crazy for about 48 hours, I thought I’d take a few minutes and talk about the West Virginia Writers Spring […]
It’s week 4 of my series of short stories. This week is a little different in that it’s part one of a longer story, which I’ll complete for you next week. It does come to somewhat of a conclusion on its own, but stay tuned for, in the words of the late great Paul Harvey, […]
It seemed like it would never get here, but I am finally finished with rewrites on my new book, Home to My Arms! It’s one last pass for proofreading and then I start the query process. As promised, only two days late, I want to share an exerpt. The situation is that the main characters, […]
If you started your visit to my site on my homepage, you’ll see I am author JD Stephens. I used to be author Joe Stephens, but I took a long break from writing for some pretty life-altering things, such as meeting and marrying the love of my life and adopting her beloved daughter, making her […]
I saw a question on a website for writers about what advice we, as writers, would give to young people who are interested in becoming writers. I may be completely wrong about this, but I feel like I have a slightly unique perspective on this, in that I started writing at a young age (I […]
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 […]
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 […]
History buffs or aviation buffs or people like me, who are just meaningless trivia buffs, may recall the story of Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan. Corrigan, according to History.com, was one of the last of the high flying daredevils known as barnstorming pilots. He once flew from California to New York. That’s not where he got […]
It started one afternoon in seminary when I began writing the opening scene of a book to keep from falling asleep in Old Testament class. Well, no, that’s not exactly true. It all began one autumn day in my college creative writing class. Nope, that’s a lie. It began one day when I came across […]