Monthly Archives: July 2014

The Art of Flashback: instantaneous, intense illumination

In both my reading and writing, I’ve always struggled with flashbacks. As a reader, I’ve trudged through my fair share of voluminous, interminable flashbacks, wondering when I’m getting back into present action, and quite honestly, at times feeling like I’m in a lecture hall while my professor/author data-dumps all he knows about a situation and/or […]

Decisive Moment gets a new cover

Just wanted to drop a quick note about Decisive Moment, namely about its cover which I decided to spiff up a bit. These are shown below, new and old, and in case you haven’t checked it out yet, I include a brief description of the story. If you want a fast, character-based read, check out […]

Concise Writing in Random Tweetable thoughts

Will Twitter help your writing? By that I mean the act of writing, the craft, as opposed to the ability to promote your writing through a stream of hashtags, links, faves and re-tweets. Will expressing yourself 140 characters at a time over-constrain your ability to convey your thoughts, will it stifle your vision? Or will […]

What Indie Publishing and Signal Processing Theory Have in Common

In case you haven’t heard, indie publishing is cheapening literature. As the claim goes, the proliferation of self-published work and the lowering of the bar for what gets published create a cacophony of noise that threatens to drown out good books and their authors. This will drive down the quality of all published books, suppress […]

Working on that author portrait

How’s your author portrait looking? Did it come from a cellphone selfie, or did you use your laptop’s webcam to capture it? Maybe it turned out OK, but… well, I’m seeing a lot of these around, at indie author Amazon pages, and they’re hurting. Bad lighting, no lighting, too wide an angle that makes you […]

The Ugly, the OK and the Improved: turning passive into active voice

If like me, you write or enjoy reading action-based fiction, nothing can kill a passage like the over-use of “to-be.” Maybe Shakespare’s Hamlet did ask a critical question, and as a guiding principle for what follows, we’ll answer it with a qualified “not to be.” Passive voice and just being I’m not going to get […]

Don’t miss your Decisive Moment, available from Kindle

Well, after some consternation, Decisive Moment made the July 15th release! This will be my first full length novel simultaneously released through the Kindle distribution channel. Here’s a brief synopsis. Enjoy! Decisive Moment: Fine-art photographer Roger Morris should not have taken a paparazzo job to fill in for his loser brother. He shouldn’t have used […]

Vote on the cover for ‘Ghost Writer’ to get a free preview copy

I need a little help selecting a book cover for my next novella, Ghost Writer. First 20 votes get a free preview copy! Vote by number and feel free to give me written feedback — the nice kind, of course. Make sure to include your email address so I can forward you the link. #1 […]

Why a Christian author spins ugly, dark, bloody tales

The following will appear as the Afterword for my upcoming novel, Decisive Moment. Though it contains a slight hint of the ending, I don’t think it will spoil the story. All the same, you might want to defer its reading until after you finish the novel. If you know I hold a Christian world-view, after […]

Active Shooter now released

Just wanted to drop a quick note about Active Shooter‘s release. It is currently available for Kindle and will soon also appear on other eBook platforms such as Nook and iBooks. I also wanted to remind you that two weeks or so, on July 15, Decisive Moment will also make its debut on Kindle and […]