I’m tabling at the Albany Book Festival when a woman walks by my display and picks up a copy of In Flight. She immediately flips the book to glance at the back cover copy. Two seconds later she puts the book down. She says in a tone that can only be heard as snarky, “Why would I want to read about a man’s midlife crisis?” “It doesn’t say midlife crisis,” I tell her. “It says midlife transitions.”...
I have a writer friend, Wendy, who has been suffering from the worst kind of writerly affliction: the dreaded writer’s block. She tells me she’s stuck in the quagmire, sinking slowly, grasping at air. Writer’s block is a daunting creative challenge. You can’t find an idea anywhere. You can’t make any progress on your work-in-progress. You have a physical aversion to sitting down at your...
This one is for my writing students. But aren’t we all students of writing? Don’t we all want to write well so that we can communicate clearly and be understood—whether we’re dashing off a text, composing an important email, or pouring our hearts out in a love letter? Writers often do a lot of research to help inform their work, but you can’t just dump a bunch of expository material into your...
A couple of years ago, a writer friend told me that soon artificial intelligence will be writing better fiction than we can. I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but I didn’t forget his words. On the bright side, it prompted me to write two new novels: The Culling and In Flight. Perhaps I was trying to get something accomplished before I became obsolete. That day might be approaching. Generative AI...
It has to be a coincidence. Randomness on display. One world is fiction and the other is real. But something just happened to me that is eerily reminiscent of what happened to the character Robert Besch in my novel In Flight. In the book, after the news spreads that the Plane-Crash Hero had suffered from a dissociative fugue, all kinds of strangers begin contacting Robert. From the novel: There...
I visited with a book group that read In Flight. It’s been a while since I’ve spoken with a book group and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy the experience (hey, readers talking about my novels—what’s not to enjoy). But I’d forgotten about the first question many readers ask: “How did you get the idea?” No matter how many times I’m asked that question, and no matter which of my novels is being...
The pulp fiction writer Jim Thompson (The Grifters, The Getaway, A Hell of a Woman—and many more) said, “There is only one plot—things are not what they seem.” And to realize that truth about fiction, chances are you have to read to the end of a book. The ending is the most important part of any novel—because no one reads a book to find out what happens in the middle. I’ve been hearing from some...
The golden age of television is considered to be the 1950s, the era when the production of many new shows ramped up, and series like I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone, and Leave it to Beaver ruled the tube. In reality, this is the golden age of television, if you add streaming to the mix. There are so many quality shows right now that people who don’t spend hours every day watching (that would be...
I’m pleased to let you know my next novel, In Flight, has been published and is available right now, right here! What’s this story about, you ask? After surviving a plane crash but suffering a trauma-induced fugue state, a successful executive and family man attempts to put his life back together while enduring the stigma of his psychological collapse. Logline: “Only in the moment of...
One of the benefits of living where I do is that the New York State Writer’s Institute is located here. Last night I got to see the acclaimed novelist Jennifer Egan, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for A Visit From the Good Squad (my review), and was here to talk about her most recent novel, The Candy House (my review). Goon Squad has a secure place on the list of “The Most Important Novels in...
It’s nearing the tenth anniversary of my father’s death, and I keep thinking about something that happened in the last year of his life. I was involved, and I’ll never know if I did the right thing. At that time, Bob had been diagnosed but was still capable of living independently. My sister and I both lived in town and were keeping a close watch on him, checking in every day, knowing at some...
I didn’t tell you what happened on my winter hike the other day. How when you’re fatigued and disoriented, your mind can play tricks. Earlier, when starting out, I was tuned to the environment. The trails were marked with colored disks, and the surface was packed snow and ice. I breathed in the cold air, the freshness of the outdoors. I took in the trail and bare trees and snowy terrain, the...
This is what’s known as a teaser: I show you the cover of my next book and let you read an excerpt to get you excited about purchasing the novel when it’s published in the very near future.
Below is the cover. Here is the first chapter. Enjoy!
Back then, my literary agent, who I had just signed a contract with to represent my novel, “Stash,” asked me if I’d ever heard of Robert McKee and his book, “Story.” I hadn’t. She suggested I get the book, read the book, and then work on my novel some more. I had mistakenly believed the novel was finished. After all, she’d agreed to represent me, so she must have thought “Stash” could sell. But...
I’ve been getting some enthusiastic feedback about “The Culling,” my dystopian thriller about a woman on the run from an unjust death sentence and the mercenary assigned to hunt her. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, here’s the link. Below is a brief scene from the novel. It takes place just after Maren meets her neighbor Ven at a small party and he offers...
