Welcome to my worlds

One of my favorite authors has a new book out: Salt & Stilettos, and I am blessed that she stopped by my blog today. Janet Walden-West is a marvelous writer. Crisp dialog, engaging characters, great plots. Reading one of her books keeps all the bad…

I entered a contest this past spring, the Soon To Be Famous Illinois Author Project. My buddy Don Bingle told me about it and encouraged me. AND … pretend you hear a drum roll … I won. Two categories for indie-published authors, Adult Fiction and…

Wrinkles Lord of the Lawn Chair Oct 20, 2006 – Sept 16, 2019 My feet are cold; there is no dog laying across them. He was always there, Wrinkles, from the first day he arrived at my house. Always at my feet, drooling on my…

I have an old dog with health issues, and I get up during the night to check on him. I have a puppy that’s not yet housebroken … a youngling that needs to go outside every couple of hours. I get up for her, too.…

One of the hosts for my The Dead of Summer blog tour emailed me five questions to answer. Then something happened and he couldn’t make the post. Well … I figure I might as well post it here. If you could give “Past You” one…

I probably could have written two chapters in the time it took me to finalize what I wanted on the back cover of The Dead of Summer. I devoured posts about creating sell copy, tips for what to include and what not to include, and…

Everyone wants to be a success, right? Succeeding is important. As a writer, I hope to produce a successful book (trying to finish the third Piper Blackwell adventure right now). In general, I want to succeed at life. But as a foster dog-mom, I am…

I subscribe to Tim Waggoner’s newsletter. He’s a great writer, and there are always some grains of wisdom I glean by reading his missives. He tackled writer’s block in one of his recent issues. Great advice, he offered. If you’re a writer or a fan…

Bruce and I celebrated our anniversary at the end of February with a trip to Peoria, Illinois. Nothing exotic, eh? No tropical breezes. I sooooooo would have liked a tropical breeze to chase away this hanging-on winter. But we had a great time. There was…

Just try to catch me I swim in a sea of short story submissions. I’m reading the slush pile for Galaxy’s Edge Magazine. It’s a wonderful publication edited by my friend Mike Resnick. I love reading slush. It provides a nice break from writing or…

So a friend says, “Summer is winding down.” I scowl at her, and she doesn’t understand. She prefers fall. I like to hold onto summer with both hands, digging my feet in and begging it not to leave. I adore the heat on my back…

I’ve read all of Donald J. Bingle’s novels, and a great many of his short stories. He keeps getting better … and the explosions and threats get bigger. Wet Work grabbed me from the first page. Contemporary, and exciting. And Dick Thornby intrigues me. I…

I really do … count my life in dog years. The number of years I share with dogs. I only briefly did not have a dog, and that was when I graduated college and moved to Quincy, Illinois, and rented a wholly dumpy apartment (which…

Witchbane reads fast, the story moves, and the writing is smooth. A master of urban fantasy, Gail Z. Martin and her other-persona Morgan Brice stopped by on the Witchbane blog tour for a Q&A. Here’s the quick recap for Witchbane: Seth Tanner and his brother…

I received a copy of the Dominican Sisters of Racine, WI, newsletter today. It made me think of Sister Mary…she’s probably the one who put me on the mailing list for it. She’s a 92-year-old Dominican nun who I met at funeral of a buddy’s…

I turn my blog over to Laurence St. John today. He has a nifty novel coming out the middle of the month, and you should hear about it. Terror on the East Coast – Two Million Dead!             TOLEDO, OHIO, March 15, 2018 – Yesterday,…

I do the Snoopy Dance when I have a new book coming out. Always have. There’s something exciting about it, the culmination of a lot of effort. And it gives me the opportunity to put a new Beanie Baby on display in my office. Yeah,…

Writing is mental, and so when your mind is tugged between various concerns, working on that novel becomes difficult. My 90-year-old father-in-law has a serious case of the flu … birthed, he claims, because he got cold when he rode the bus to Champaign to…

I fell in love with Faith Hunter’s words when I discovered my first Jane Yellowrock. Then I bought the next one and the next … I hadn’t considered myself a fan of urban fantasy. Ha! I’d written plenty of fantasy novels, and even penned an…

When The Dead of Night was getting ready to release, I wrote some guest blogs for various sites. One was a Q&A session, and it never ran. BUT, since I took the time to answer all the questions, I figured it should run somewhere, right?…

NANO NANO Yesterday a friend asked me why I participate in Nanowrimo. “You don’t need it,” he said. I have thirty-eight published novels, and I stopped counting the short stories when I hit one hundred. “I need it,” I replied. Because I want to have…

My Cacophonous Mess So they asked what my office looks like. Depends which office. Late spring through early fall my office is my screened-in back porch. I have a big table I found on sale at Wal-Mart, and a comfy desk chair (also on sale).…

When I lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin, I took pottery classes from an amazing instructor who taught out of an equally amazing museum. I made amazingly bad pottery there. Seriously. I crafted a “hand-built” teapot that was crooked and couldn’t pour. And some other ugly dishes.…

In a handful of days my next Piper Blackwell mystery comes out: The Dead of Night. It opens with a character called Mark the Shark. I met all three of him in Quincy, Illinois. My father-in-law lives in a senior apartment complex in Quincy. On…

MUSE: a person or force providing inspiration for a creative artist Synonyms: inspiration, creative influence, stimulus, DOG I started out as a fantasy and science fiction writer. Well, actually I started out as a newspaper reporter covering courts, cops, and crime. But when I dove…