Scene-Building: Beginnings

Scenes are the core building blocks of my fiction writing style. I don't think in chapters at all anymore, except as a big-picture timeline of the story. It is the individual scene where I can meet my characters head on and discover what they have to say at any given time during the tale. Don't…

My Journey with Steinbeck Continues…

I've taken a summer lover! After reading East of Eden and the journal he kept while writing Eden, it appears I'm embarking on a summer affair with John Steinbeck. Next up is The Winter of Our Discontent, which is the last novel Steinbeck wrote. Published in 1961, he received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature…

What I learned from Steinbeck

I always marvel at the speed with which writers seem to churn out books these days. Of course, most of these are self-published, so the only obstacles are those you put in front of yourself. But even some well-known authors in traditional publishing houses seem to write so - well so fast, and I wonder why…