Carol Lannon of the Signal Mountain Mirror was kind enough to write a combined article about my creative life as an artist/writer and a review of my new historical mystery, An Uncertain Peace. Click to read the article!
Work on my novel, An Uncertain Peace, began almost thirty years ago. I had an idea for a story about a Civil War officer who was involved in gathering intelligence. General Grenville Dodge led an early incarnation of all-source intelligence for the Western Union Army, and that seemed like it might be fertile ground for…
In a previous post, “In the Beginning…“, I discussed how the concept for An Uncertain Peace originated in a coffee shop in Mobile, Alabama. That step was crucial; it gave me a goal. However, it did not give me a plan for writing the novel. I thought it did, but it didn’t. To use an…
By the end of my post, “How Do You Get To Chicago?”, I had a manuscript of 125,000+ words lying in a computer file. Visions of agents pounding on my door and publishers desperately outbidding each other for the book rights danced in my head. Then, like a car crash, reality smashed into my life….
I’ve been drawing all my life and painting since middle school, so it should come as no surprise that my goal was to become an artist. Yet in college, where I studied art, I took all the history courses I could and came to enjoy writing term papers. Yes, you read that correctly. I suppose…
The following post was published in October 2013. I’m re-posting it on this website since it illustrates how the arts can, even on a rainy day in London, bring enchantment to life. I was thirteen when I decided to become an international jewel thief. Like many criminal decisions, mine was impulsive, and it involved a…
Recently, a friend of mine said that she had some good stories in her mind, but that time had passed her by. She was too old to be a writer. Writing was for the young. I didn’t say much, as I suspected that what she meant was that she didn’t have the energy or the…
There is an old saying in Texas, “When the horse is dead, it’s time to get off.” As an artist and a writer, that’s good to remember. Sometimes, one must admit that things are not working out as planned. What began with clarity of vision has now become murkiness of purpose. One must finally acknowledge…
As writers, we must have a critical feedback loop. Rather like the body’s immune system, it must be strong enough to ward off what is destructive or unnecessary, but not so strong that it stifles healthy growth. That balance is essential. If the feedback loop is too weak, a writer can’t develop greater facility in…
A nearly 100-year-old Underwood typewriter came into my life recently. My wife and I went to Atlanta to meet the newest addition to the family, baby Violet. While we were there, we stopped by to see our brother-in-law, and he gave us an old Underwood portable typewriter that had belonged to my wife’s dad. It…