I have to admit that I have become kind of a Substack junky. I obsessively check my stats and try figure out if it indicates a growing audience or some other trend. Hey, I like validation as much as the next guy. I was going to repost last night’s Substack here but this morning…
Read MoreChances are if you are reading this here, you follow my Substack or have had it sent to your inbox or plastered on your social media. It’s all part of my effort to promote my books out in the vastness of internet land. That means posting the same thing on many platforms at the…
Read MoreMy grandmother used to say, “Actors Act and Writers Write”. It was usually in response to my pointing out a good actor in a bad role. I will confess that it took me years to fully understand what she meant. It has something to do with the compulsion that drives certain people. I suspect…
Read MoreNo matter what you write. No matter what genre, style or project, essay, novel or poem, it always starts with the same thing. The blank page in front of you. It doesn’t matter if that page is a sheet of actual paper or on a computer screen. They are equally daunting. If you don’t…
Read MoreWhy it’s easier to write an 80,000 word novel than a weekly 800 word blog. After my last post my friend Amy who’s known me since we were Freshmen at URI, said that she always felt like Blogging was like writing letters to friends. She should know, she’s done both and a lot better…
Read MoreI get asked a lot of questions about how one gets to be a writer. What should someone do if they want to be a writer. I’d like to say that there is a simple answer, do X or Y enough and you too can be a writer. I don’t have a pat answer…
Read MoreI moved to Rhode Island in 1986 from Nantucket. On Nantucket there were two papers that were king; The Inquirer Mirror (The Inky Mirror or just The Inky) and the Boston Globe. When I moved to Providence one thing became apparent, this was a one-paper town. That paper was and still is The Providence Journal…
Read MoreI don’t know if I always knew I wanted to be a writer or if I figured it out along the way. I can’t sit here and proclaim that since I was five, I wanted to be a writer. When I was five, I wanted to be an astronaut, a cowboy, a soldier, a pilot,…
Read More