I just finished the fourth complete rewrite of what I hope will be my next published novel. It’s taken a long time, because I’ve been reexamining everything about my craft, about structure, about what I hope readers will take away from my books. This was a true labor of love, nurtured by my patient agent who has many good ideas about storytelling.
I’ll be teasing the content in future posts. For now, stay tuned!
If you're on my email list or following me on social media, you've already heard me going on about dual-timeline novels, about how much I love to read them and marvel at the skill it takes to write one. Where is all this coming from? I think two places: 1. Discovering...
Yes, it’s a lot. And no, I’m not a writer who is used to creating books in that amount of time. So how am I doing it? Basically, all three of the books that have come out or will come out in the 15 months since last August have their origins much further back in my...
This is, of course, the opposite advice than is often given to young writers. But it occurred to me from a chance comment by someone on my email list that this is exactly what I do—in a way. It's not that I write from ignorance, exactly. Perhaps it would be better to...
Cast on 28 stitches. Size 19 needles. Knit one row. I had to throw so much yarn away before I moved, thanks to the moths. Alpacas and merinos that would have felt soft and warm as they slipped through my fingers and grew row by row into something, anything. Blues and...
This is a question I'm asked from time to time by inexperienced writers, who are—quite naturally—concerned that they're not seen as copying another author or idea, or are afraid of having someone else copy theirs. I say "quite naturally," because in many areas of our...
The peculiar thing about writing a book is that sometimes you don’t know where the idea for it came from. Other times you can trace it exactly to something you saw, heard, read, researched, etc. But whatever spawned the idea, something about it made you feel as if you...
One of the things I do that might make people think I'm a little crazy is that I rewatch my favorite series, over and over again. It's partly for comfort and reassurance: I know how things will turn out in the end, and during a tough year, that's helpful. But I also...
I moved into an apartment in an old mill building in Biddeford, Maine in February of this year. Although I have a daughter, grandsons, and a brother and his family who live in Portland (twenty minutes away), I knew no one in this town. I stayed in touch, of course,...
This subject matters, whether you're a reader or a writer. Writers because it's important to understand the forces at work in the publishing world, and readers because those same forces can have a big effect on the books available to you to read. The hermetic world of...
My twelfth historical novel, The Portraitist, is coming out with She Writes Press on August 30 of this year. It’s a book I’ve been working on in one form or another for seven years. I’ve also written and published novels within the space of a single year, usually...
My Life Changed. But I Still Have a Book Coming Out. I knew something was wrong with him almost a year ago, but I didn’t know how wrong. He’d seen me through nearly eleven book launches, was always there for the triumphs and the disappointments. He read my books, he...
I happened to realize the other day that my bedroom walls are decorated with old photographs and drawings of my forebears, all of whom are no more. There’s my maternal grandmother in her high school graduation picture from 1929. My other grandmother in her wedding...
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