Resent with the corrected link to Smoking Hot Mysteries below.I'll get to the title and theme of this newsletter and the reason for the picture above in a bit. First this:Last week someone referred to me as a "word jockey." An image immediately appea...

I'll get to the title and theme of this newsletter and the reason for the picture above in a bit. First this:Last week someone referred to me as a "word jockey." An image immediately appeared in my mind of a helmeted, silk-clad rider with feet in the...

The title of the email comes from an excerpt from Book 6, the current WIP, which can be found farther down.The book is coming along nicely as the closing chapters draw near. The threads are climbing to exciting crescendos for this segment of the adve...

You may ask: Waiting for a 5th of what? I'll get to that.I'm happy to report that I sold a short story in September. The editor responded to my submission by writing back to say it was a "fantastic" story. Naturally, I had to agree. He probably says...

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste."I received word this week that one of the anthologies to which I had submitted a short story had been canceled, and that made me think of the United Negro College Fund commercial from the 70s which ended with the...

--because of a glitch with my email sender many of you did not get this email on the second when it was sent. The correction is still in the works, but a temporary fix is letting me send this email to you a littler latter than usual. My apologies if...

The subject line was taken from the next paragraph of our collaborative story. I'll get to that in a bit.This week I was smitten with the plague--the flu, most likely. That's why this letter is a day late. I was not in a condition to write it yesterd...

The subject line was taken from the chosen submission for the second paragraph of our collaborative story.Here is the link to our collaborative story, showing two paragraphs so far.The submissions for the proposed 2nd paragraph were fabulous, and I e...

Give me your best proposed second paragraph to follow this first paragraph below for a short story:The clouds in the summer sky burned in the red-orange rage of a dispossessed sun crashing below the horizon. The dark hills--recumbent silhouette--shie...

I attended the Writers Cantina in Utah last week. If you're interested in a hasty report of that experience, you can read about that here.One of the sessions at the cantina dealt with tropes. What are your favorite tropes to read? What tropes turn up...