In Part Three, I described the importance of contributions of in-process readers of manuscripts. And I closed by noting that, aside from...

When my wife Linda finished reading her third three-chapter block of manuscript pages for A Fearful Thing – on its way to becoming the...

C. S. Lewis told his readers and his correspondents repeatedly that, when you read fiction, you will not have a good experience unless...

I have mentioned in earlier posts that the characters in my novels are not based on actual people. Rather, I normally create my...

Before the proliferation of e-readers – and using them as convenient and inexpensive substitutes for actual books – the cover art...

Occasionally I – like other authors – get notes from people who have read one of my novels. They sometimes write, “I really enjoyed your...

Near the end of my second adult-level novel – the second in the Rebecca Series – we read this passage: The gunman, kicking wildly at her...

In previous posts, I’ve suggested that, in action/mystery novels, a background romance can add suspense to the mystery and depth to the...

At the end of the highly successful film The Bourne Identity, the actor Matt Damon somehow finds the actress Franka Potente on what...

My stories – adult and young adult – often feature boats or ships at some point. What’s the difference? Well, the easiest way to think...

A Fearful Thing, the fifth novel in my Rebecca Series, opens with a car chase through the streets of London. On page two of the book, we...

My new novel, A Fearful Thing, is the fifth novel in the Rebecca Series. It is set in the year 1985, four (fictional) years after the...

Over the years, when I have found myself speaking to students in their classrooms, or to adults at book-signing events, I have often been...

I have noted before, in other posts, how fast and hard I tend to get rolling when an action scene approaches. Since I am fast on the...

In the introduction to his novel tilted Winter Prey, John Sandford observes that this story was one of his first in which the novel’s...

Authors, readers, and book reviewers often agree that in many novels, the “evil” character is the one who is the most carefully developed...

During book readings and other kinds of presentations related to my novels, I have often been asked that kind of question. The most...

In Part One of this two-part post, I wrote about how novels are often pieced together. And I mentioned that, in the first two novels in...

Whenever I am a guest teacher for an hour or so in a high-school or middle-school English class, I usually pull a novel off of the...

What do authors think about when choosing names for the characters in their novels? This is a question I get often at book signings or in...