I was recently on vacation with my family and watched my eight year-old daughter come to terms with absolute terror. My oldest wanted to go on a ride at the Santa Cruz boardwalk that propels you vertically like a rocket and then zips you up and down, kind of like

I’d like to give credit to my wife for coming up with the idea for this one. She made a comment recently after reading another batch of reviews that there are subtle themes that tend to repeat in the reactions of my readers. Some love the elements of faith and

I recently saw a tweet by Kate Danley, one of my colleagues at 47North, author of The Woodcutter. It went like this: “Except for the soul crushing self doubt, being a writer is grand!” That spoke to me because all authors experience that insidious soul-crushing force. I have followed several

My life took an interesting turn the last few weeks. By the end of December, I had a few hundred readers enjoying Muirwood and my other books. As of this writing, the number is about 12,000. More people have started on Muirwood in the last week than all of last

When I was in college at San Jose State, I took Latin classes from Marianina Olcott. That is where I learned about the Roman concept of Virtus (pronounced “where-tuus”). It was a trait that the Romans respected, but it did not mean just virtue. It included other qualities too: prudentia

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (Eccl 1:9) I’ve heard the cliche before (no new thing under the sun), but I experienced it recently working on

I’m impressed with Brandon Sanderson. I first learned about him back in the days of Deep Magic, the e-zine that some friends and I published many years ago. He had just come out with his first novel (Elantris) and I managed to interview him for the ‘zine and also enjoyed

It was interesting (or ironic) that I was going to write a blog posting today and happened across an article in the LA Times. Gotta love Google News feeds. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-endurability7-2010feb07,0,4119789.story What struck me about the article is how broken the publishing system is today. It has not transformed fully yet

A week ago I was in New York City on a business trip. While I was eating a burger in Central Park and enjoying the beautiful day in Manhattan, I thought about the agent I was still waiting to hear back from. Funny how thoughts can trigger actions. Friday when