As I was writing Captive, we were all learning about a virus called SARS COV 2. It is now a ghastly and ever-present fact of our everyday lives but it has been largely ignored by the world of fiction. I don’t watch a lot of TV but I have yet Read more…
Spoiler alert. If you have not read Cabal, move away from this page. A couple of readers have asked me about my writing process and asked about my use of mind maps. As an example here is the mind map for Cabal. I doesn’t fully align with the story because Read more…
I really don’t need this shit. Another dumb-assed meeting with my shrink I’m gonna be late for. I just want to go home, pick up Jill and the kids, and get out of town for a weekend at the cottage. The sidewalk is packed with plebs heading for the subway, Read more…
Quite a few of my readers have asked me about my writing process, so I thought I would take a moment away from writing Three to talk about it. People who know more than me say that writers fall into two camps: (1) the planners who work out all the details Read more…
What do Isaac Asimov, William Blake, J.K. Rowling, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Tennessee Williams, Kurt Vonnegut and Emily Dickinson have in common with me and probably many of you too? Depression. I really value my friends on Twitter and FaceBook but my latest bout with the black hand Read more…
Ok. So you’ve got to draft 3 (or 4 or 5) and you’re happy with the plot, the characters, the relationships. There’s tension on every page. Your editor, if you have one—and you should!—has helped you get this manuscript into top shape. You have given a last careful read-through of Read more…
In another break from my usual routine, this is a review of a children’s book. Jumper is written by Rebecca Scarberry and beautifully illustrated by Terri Kelleher. Jumper is about a big red beach ball who lives in a toy store and longs to escape so that he can swim in Read more…
As a writer, I sometimes get stuck creatively. I have heard this referred to as writer’s block but it is not exclusive to writers. Whether you are a business person, an engineer, in medicine, the arts, government or an NGO, you are likely familiar with the frustration of being creatively Read more…
This review is a departure from my normal reviews of crime fiction and I would like to start off by saying that I never read self-help books… well… not never but not for a few years, at least. When my friend of many years, Rael Kalley, gave me a copy Read more…
In my humble opinion, this is a real breakthrough novel for R. P. McCabe. The first thing I noticed about the book is that the style is redolent of my favourite US author of all time: John Steinbeck. Then I noticed a lovely device that I have never seen in Read more…