My mom told me to marry an Italian woman. Best advice she ever gave me.

#sundaysupper

Let’s do this!!! March 18, an Agatha-Christie style murder mystery set in 1970 Florida. Available for pre-order on Amazon right now.

It was my extraordinary honor to jump in and finish the late Peggy Shainberg’s magnificent story.

Thank you @leighshowe and Lynn Sass for entrusting me with your mother’s story.

#coverreveal #fiction #mystery #florida #unfinishedstory

THE END.

No feeling like it in the world. And it took me hammering out 5000 words today to get there. My fingers are shaking.

It may be a complete mess, but it’s my mess, 130k of Otis’s story, how he cut his teeth in the wine biz in Sonoma and eventually worked his way north to Red Mountain in Washington State.

The issues left in the wake of my key strokes are monumental: plot holes—no, plot craters, characters lacking an arc; massive timing issues; 1.2 million instances of the word “very”; sentences so pedestrian even a six-year-old would angrily strike through them with her red crayon; settings described so dully that the reader might not know what year or country they’re in; themes left abandoned; dialogue that reads: “How are you?” “Oh, I’m nice. How are you?” “Good, thanks. Nice day today.” “Yes, I like the blue sky.”

But at least the sand is in the sandbox. Now it’s time to take a couple of days off, then dive in and see if I can wrangle some kind of story out of her.

Honestly, if you read this jumble of wreckage, you’d wonder how I can make a living doing this. If you’re a budding writer, you might be encouraged.

Thanks for letting me share. These little wins are worth taking a pause. In fact, I think we’ll open a bottle of David Ramey’s wine tonight to celebrate.

#writingishard #ineedtherapy #amwriting #fiction #TheEnd #redmountainchronicles #Otis #lakeunionpublishing #amazonkindle #bookclub #sonomacounty

Excited to jump into this tome by @levgrossman

#amreading #kingarthur #fiction

Whilst writing this morn, I put my character into the feedle position. Might be a good time to learn how to spell.

Thank the gods for editors. By the way, AN ECHO IN TIME is out today! And it’s properly edited by some of the best in the biz: Tiffany Yates Martin, Danielle Marshall, and Andrea Hurst.

Find out what all the future fuss is about . . .

#amwriting #lakeunionpublishing #newrelease #kindle #amazonpublishing #bookclub #winchester #england #boston #costarica #audible #familyconstellationtherapy #generationaltrauma

I spent the morning writing the way I did before this was my career, back when I didn’t think anyone would ever read my words, back when the characters of Red Mountain were just finding their way to the page. I let it all go, forgetting about the reception, the readers, @nytimes list. Hell, I even forgot about my outline and the plot. I simply shed the clothes of my soul and wrote with this lovely naked, exposed, unafraid, and deliciously vulnerable freedom that felt all kinds of good.

Writing is so easy. About once a month.

#amwriting #fiction #WritingIsEasy #writeordie #ILoveDeadlines #ishouldhavebeenanolympicgymnast #books

I’m so excited to start this one. I suspect I will adore it.

#amreading #darkmatter @blakecrouch1