There are 84 blog posts for you to enjoy.
Hollow Places
October 31, 2026
Everyone quotes the iceberg. Almost nobody quotes the sentence that comes after it.
If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
Death in the Afternoon, 1932, chapter sixteen, page 192.
Read MoreAre Books Getting Shorter? Why Younger Generations are Embracing Shorter Novels
October 24, 2026
If you’ve spent any time browsing bookstore shelves, scrolling through #BookTok, or checking your reading tracker lately, you might have noticed a subtle shift: books are getting noticeably slimmer.
Where multi-volume 600-page epics once ruled the bestseller lists, quick 150-to-250-page reads are having a major cultural moment. Headlines often blame the usual suspect — our collective, possibly shortened attention spans — for this trend. But is the rise of the novella really just a sign that younger generations can’t pay attention anymore? Or is something deeper happening in the way we read?
Read MoreWriting Accents: Let the Reader Hear the Character
October 17, 2026
When a character in a novel has a noticeable accent, how much of that accent should actually appear on the page?
That is a question I faced while writing Ritmo y PasiĂłn. I wanted some of my characters to sound like people from Spanish-speaking countries when they spoke English. But I also knew there was a danger in trying too hard. If you write every word exactly as the character might pronounce it, you may successfully communicate the accent. And you may also make your reader work so hard at deciphering the dialogue that the story itself gets pushed into the background.
Read MoreWhat the Watercolor Leaves Out
October 10, 2026
I've been posting a quote a day for over three years. Somewhere north of a thousand of them now. Lately I've been going back through the old ones, rechecking sources and fixing the text color, sometimes backgrounds, and I've learned something I didn't expect to learn.
It isn't that I got a lot of attributions wrong; though I did get a few wrong, the internet is such fun when you're trying to get to the source of anything (sarcasm). The problem is that the format itself does something to a sentence, and I hadn't been paying attention to it.
Read MoreDepth Hooks: Why Good Stories Leave Something Behind
October 3, 2026
Depth Hooks: Why Good Stories Leave Something Behind
When a Story Has More World Than Plot
When I wrote Kidnapped Again?, I had no idea I would later write a sequel. I didn’t plant hooks. I didn’t leave little glowing breadcrumbs for a future book. I was simply trying to write the story in front of me as honestly and completely as I could.
After draft 5, and idea came to mind for a sequel. I started writing the story Now What? and halfway through, something unexpected happened.
Read More
I used to teach English as a foreign language in Barranquilla, Colombia. Now I'm retired and traveling throughout South America.
I'm from Kennewick, Washington, USA. In my previous life, as I call it, I was an IT guy, systems administrator, computer tech, as well as a shipping/receiving guy and also worked as a merchandising guy in a RV/Camping store.