The Unexpected Death Scene

Posted inWriting
So I'm writing last night, plugging away at my work in progress. Working on this major action sequence, a series of four or five brief chapters that (hopefully) string together like a Spielberg setpiece. Think the truck scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Minority Report and you have the idea. And right in the middle of it, this character ... he died. I didn't expect him to die. Hadn't included it in my outline. Hadn't plotted for it. But he's there and this situation arises and I realized as I was writing, "He's not going to make it,…

Bust my website, please

Posted inUncategorized
Spent a good portion of the other day fixing, tweaking, and redesigning my personal website. Please take a look and if anything looks out of place, broken, or otherwise awful, let me know by commenting here, on FaceBook or Twitter, or by emailing me. The kind of browser you're running will be helpful, along with whatever didn't work for you. Thanks.

Stuff for which I am thankful

Posted inRandom Musings
We're supposed to reflect today (though really we ought do that every day, don't you think?), and so, as I wait for the family to get ready for our car ride to grandmother's house -- we will be going over a river, but won't be near any woods -- I thought I'd quickly do just that. I am, of course, thankful for a wonderful family who not only support me when I devote long hours in solitude to my creative projects, but who also make me proud by being the good, smart, and of course loving people they are. I…

Ueten ven hein! Schnell un blitzenberg!

Posted inAlfred Hitchcock, Random Musings
Okay, I've got to link to this week's episode of the Year of Hitchcock podcast, if only because I cracked myself up while editing it. The faux German shtick in the first few minutes of the Lifeboat episode were a bit of unexpected stupidity that had me howling when I listened to it a few weeks after recording. I had completely forgotten I did that. Moments like this are the reason why we do the podcast. Because it's fun, and hopefully entertaining. We enjoyed writing the book of the same name and think it holds up quite nicely as a…

Book royalties, advances, and empty wallets

Posted inWriting
In a previous blog post I pointed out that authors do not make a lot of money. And that's true. They don't. The reality is that you DON'T simply write a book and watch the money start coming in. Not unless you hit a one-in-a-million publisher feeding frenzy for your book or accidentally write the next Harry Potter. Instead, you write a book that will eventually provide you with a modest amount of money -- and "modest" may very well mean, "enough to finally get that tune-up you've been putting off" -- then you do another, and another, and another,…