• One Terrific Lie

    118,857

    Here it goes: I’m finished! Well, the first draft anyway. Some people who aren’t writers have asked me if I’m ready to send that novel off to my publisher, Pantera Press. Ha! I wish I could write a flawless first draft. I can’t. Nobody can. Decades ago, when I was inexperienced and much more sure of (read: full of) myself, I was certain my early drafts were as close to perfect as they could be because I had such a instinctual understanding of story. But time’s taught me I’m an idiot. And it’s also drilled into me a question that almost incapacitates me before any session where I sit down…

  • One Terrific Lie

    116,990

    One of the hardest things in writing is being honest with yourself and, much more importantly, your writing. The problem is sending your writing out into the world, where the following will judge it: family friends peers the reading public critics. These forces influence the writer in different ways. Some of my books have heavy sex scenes. I often wonder how my family feels about me producing those. Do they walk around thinking, Wow, he’s really depraved? Any number of elements in a story could stun, repulse, or frighten a family member who thought they knew the writer. I think this sits at the forefront of a lot of writers’…