Old Hickory
My Presidential reading list got waylaid for a little while last year with Andrew Jackson and American Lion. This book sat on my nightstand for too long, but I finally finished it over the weekend. President’s Day weekend no less! So. Andrew Jackson. Old Hickory. Generally, I enjoyed the read, but Jackson didn’t jump out at me as I would have thought. His story before becoming President is fascinating. Born from truly humble origins (no one is 100% sure which state he was actually born in, it was that humble), courageous as a boy during the Revolutionary War when he Read more…
Meet your next favorite book
Years ago I signed up for Goodreads.com. For some reason, I got out of the habit of posting there. I think that I thought I should go through my bookshelf and add every book I’d read. I also was temporarily lured away by Google Books, which had an incredible feature: you could search within books that you’d read. It turns out, though, that while that feature sounded awesome in theory, I rarely used it. And in the meantime, I stopped updating the books I’d read on Goodreads. When I started publishing my own books, I got back into Goodreads to Read more…
Reading “the Classics”
On my first day of freshman year of high school, my English teacher–Mr. Dudas–gave us a pop quiz. It was a take-home quiz, and it wasn’t a hard one. There was only one question: “What books did you read over the summer?” Being a bookworm, and eager to make a good first impression with my teacher, I went through my bookshelf and started listing them. I had read so many books that summer! Adult books even, like Michael Crichton novels. I had read so many books over the summer that I had to finish listing them on the back of Read more…
Ask An Author: “How do I get reviewers to read my book?”
Getting people to read a book from an unknown author with no track record is hard work. When I published The Saints Go Dying, I uploaded the text, the cover, and poof, I thought I was done. Only later did I realize how much more work I could have done. It turns out that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of bloggers out there who are interested in reading new independent fiction. Many are focused on narrow genres: romance, paranormal, young-adult, etc. Some have much wider interests. When I saw the potential of getting early readers, I got serious. Three Read more…
Finally live on the iBookstore!
For months I’ve been working to get my books onto Apple’s iBookstore. I’ve worked through a number of systems, formatting, and I’m finally glad to say that The Saints Go Dying and The Marinara Murders are both live in the store (plus the audiobook of The Little Book of Gold–the ebook version of it will be coming soon). Apple has become a big platform for book sales, and–in many ways–it was Apple that spurred me to self-publishing. When I read about the iPad, I wanted to get The Saints Go Dying on there when it launched. I never made it, Read more…
Frank Herbert: Son of Tacoma, Father of Dune
When I was young and delving into science fiction, I discovered this dense, rather difficult novel called Dune. It was hard to get into as a 6th grader, because it used lots of made-up works, but I really enjoyed it. I was surprised to find on the author flap that the author was from Tacoma. I didn’t know anyone famous had come from Tacoma. It was always in the back of my head that Tacoma had this famous and groundbreaking author from here. Last year I investigated that a little bit more in the research room at the downtown library. Read more…
The Great Molasses Flood
Nearly ten years ago I stumbled onto the great molasses flood in Boston. A massive vat of molasses burst in Boston on January 15, 1919, causing a wave of hot molasses to flood the streets at 35 miles per hour, knocking a train off its rails and killing 20 people. I included a fictional description of the scene in a novel I wrote about 10 years ago. I still find the idea fascinating. Supposedly for decades after, on hot days the bricks of Boston sidewalks would smell like molasses and the harbor was dyed brown for months. The Atlantic has Read more…
I recorded an audiobook!
Way back in June I started a new project: recording an audiobook of my fundraising guide, The Little Book of Gold. Working with Doug Mackey at Moonyard Studios, I was able to record a high quality audiobook and upload it directly into the Audible store. It was a fascinating experience, demanding a lot of patience and very. clear. enunciation. It was surprisingly tiring, I thought. Then, after the sound editing had been done, I had to listen to the whole thing again very slowly, reading the book while I listened, and watching for any slip-ups I made or dropped words Read more…
“The Con Before Christmas” is now on Kindle!
It’s no longer free, but you can still get The Con Before Christmas for $1.99 (which is practically free) delivered direct to your Kindle. (I would still encourage you to sign up for my author newsletter of course!) It’s the next Beautyman mystery, but if you haven’t read the others, that’s fine, it’s still a good stand-alone read. I think this is a really fun story. The novella is about 90 pages long, so it’s prefect for a long drive or quick flight on your holiday weekend. I hope you’ll check it out!
Something Frosted This Way Comes
I’m very excited to announce that later this month I’m launching a new Beautyman mystery. This time it’s a novella, but during the holidays, who has time to read anything longer? This is going to be a fun one. Expect it on bookshelves soon!
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