Tuesday, June 11, 2024

Age Limit


The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart.
roey, six, reading                                      Rory, six, reading The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart.

                                      Recommended for ages 6 to 600.

Sunday, May 19, 2024

Raymond Chandler on writers

A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong."    
                           
--Raymond Chandler


Raymond Chandler at desk



Favorites:

The Big Sleep

The Simple Art of Murder

The long Goodbye






And a bonus quote:

"Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon."

Sunday, May 12, 2024

A Minifesto

 

myself with book

Call it a minifesto.

Art imitates life, said Aristotle, but Oscar Wilde allowed as he’d gotten it backward: life imitates art. These days, we’re worried that machines imitate art uncomfortably well, but that’s not where the real threat to artists comes from. It’s the audience imitating artists that should worry us. The general public has taken to imitating art with such gusto and aplomb that the artists—read storytellers—are getting crowded out.

Read the entire piece at Criminal Element.

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Q&A with Fresh Fiction

 




How did you decide where your book was going to take place?


Luxor and London were pretty much de rigeur for a story about Sherlock Holmes and the pharaoh’s curse. Monte Carlo was just for fun, and the Reichenbach Falls seemed like a good place to kill off Holmes. 

Wait! Did I say that? 

Did I do that?

A little bit about Holmes, a little bit about Tut, a little bit about me. Catch the whole piece at Fresh Fiction.