UPDATED 2/27/13 11:20am EST All right! The first draft of DOGS OF PARSONS HOLLOW, the screenplay, is in the can. Thank goodness. At 131 pages I feel that it’s too long, but a revision will sort out problems of pacing and length. In any case, it’s a wonderful feeling to yet again realize a long-held […]
As established in the first part of this ongoing series, my introduction to literature began with Poe, which stoked in me a taste for the macabre. In the mid- to late-70s, was there a more well publicized and successful go-to person for such material than Stephen King? Nope. And so, that’s where I went: Carrie, Salem’s […]
Here’s something fun for Monday morning… a WIP sketch of the layout of my fictional Edgewater County, SC. Needs more detail and a couple of town names yet, but this is good enough for the moment. Looking forward to seeing this fully rendered. NOTE: The action in DOGS OF PARSONS HOLLOW takes place in the […]
“Fear is the mind-killer.” —Frank Herbert, Dune The line struck me, and stuck with me. I had a long way to go to conquer Fear, however. What I didn’t fear was plunging into reading a dense, complex novel like Dune, but had to admit that I didn’t enjoy that level of narrative world building (see […]
In the immortal words of David Byrne, how did I get here? The path I’ve taken in becoming an author of novels, short stories, and screenplays (along with industrial scripts, narrative nonfiction articles, academic papers, advertising copy, and various business documents I’ve been tasked with composing) is certainly ongoing, but began the day as child […]
Here’s a useful set of writing rules courtesy French author Marc Levy. After an initial stroke of luck in 1999 with his first book (Dreamworks nabbed the film rights, allowing Levy to quit his day job and write full time), he’s since had quite a bit more success—thirteen novels in print to the worldwide tune of 27 million total […]
As work progresses in 2013, every month or so I’ll post an update. — DOGS OF PARSONS HOLLOW (novel) After a fast and somewhat mysterious rejection from Simon & Schuster, the MS is currently at Penguin Group, where the longer it stays the better: these things take time. I persuaded an agent, Michelle L. Johnson, who persuaded […]
So you’ve completed and revised a manuscript that’s a thriller, that’s a character study, that’s suspenseful and literary and exciting . . . an easy sell, right? Right. What if it’s set in a milieu that could be seen as distasteful or icky, however . . . like the brutal blood-sport of dogfighting?
Backstory: A number of years ago I began a YA I called VISUAL PURPLE, in which an emotionally disturbed young woman, Courtleigh, 25, pretends for a variety of reasons to be 15 again—she interacts with actual teenagers, has a love affair, and through her actions engenders tragedy, violence, and her own downfall. During a few […]
Readers of my Saturday Evening Post short story finalist ‘Trailer Trash‘ (a version of which also currently appears in Petigru Review, the journal of the SC Writer’s Workshop) have not only told me what a vivid picture I paint of my young protagonist’s ordeal in extreme housecleaning, but also in my scene-setting during the story’s […]
