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 […]

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 […]

As promised, here is a new excerpt from my work-in-progress. I hope you enjoy it. It’s an unusual scene. The style is different than usual and that’s on purpose. See what you think of it and also tell me what you think the intended purpose is and whether I achieved it. I’d love it if […]

Note: this is in place of my WIP Wednesday post, which will reappear next week. One of the questions that readers ask, whether consciously or not, is, “Why should I buy your book?” Most people have a finite amount of money to spend on books, so they want to know what makes an author’s works […]

How is it Wednesday again already? I will try my hardest to remember to put up an excerpt each week from now on. In keeping with that, here’s a scene that follows hard on the scene from last week. In it, Harry meets a stranger who seems kind of familiar and who gives him some […]

I have to be the worst blogger in the history of blogdom. Not sure that’s a word, it probably will be eventually. I know it’s weeks and weeks in between posts. I also know that’s no way to get a following. I promise to try my darndest to do better now that the school year […]

It’s traditional to share an excerpt from your work-in-progress on Wednesdays. Unfortunately, I’ve not made any progress this week on Shalan #6 (or Shalan #2, depending on how you decide to number them). It’s been a busy, productive week, just not in the realm of writing. I’d love to be one of those writers who […]

In case you are new here, I have written and self-published books in a series (I’ve since unpublished them–I deal with that in a subsequent post). The narrator is a guy named Harry Shalan, pronounced shay-lun. That’s a bit of a running joke. No one seems to be able to pronounce it. Harry came to […]