Imagine viewing a portrait of a uniquely beautiful person. The model is nude, hiding nothing, displaying supple skin and curls of hair that play with the light. As your eyes move from one quadrant to another, the shadows also move, revealing new details — when did those cracks appear near…

Ask me where I live, and I won’t start with the address. Not that I dislike visitors. I just want to know your familiarity with the history of DeKalb, Illinois. “The Clinton Rosette home — know where that is?” “No,” the usual answer. “Do you know who Clinton Rosette was?” …

Authors: Stop Blaming Indie Bookstores There’s a surprising amount of antipathy toward independent booksellers and it comes from an unexpected source: indie authors. You might think small press and self-published authors would see locally-owned bookshops as natural partners in serving the book-buying public — we’re both little guys fighting the…

Interview Tips from the Other Side of the Mic “What did you have for breakfast today?” This is the first question I asked people who came to be interviewed at WNIJ, the NPR station where I had an author interview program. This always-unexpected query never made it to broadcast. But…

(Satire) “Welcome to the Creative Sandbox Writer’s Retreat” Dear valued guest, “The Sandbox,” as we affectionately call it, is an author-focused, reality-free domain that allows you to fully explore the imaginary spaces necessary to create unputdownable books. Our goal is to help you recapture those childhood hours when creation was…

(Satire) Dear Publisher: Notes from a Disgruntled Rejectee Dear Publisher, Many thanks for responding to my manuscript query. Even though it took 11 months, two weeks, and three days for your reply to arrive, and even though it was clearly a form email, I’m grateful that your college intern took…

Independent Book Store Day is coming — when’s the last time you shopped at one? Many readers count themselves as supporters but might still be in the pandemic habit of ordering via an app or downloading to an e-reader. With this in mind, allow me to suggest we spend more…

Two shoppers stood in an indie bookstore before a row of new releases, each spine announcing the latest effort by an author who poured their sweat and soul into this book. When one shopper picked up a volume, the other held their phone near the cover. “4.8 stars with fifty…

Recently, fellow authors asked me for details about the 20-month campaign for my vampire novel Fiona’s Guardians. They saw me reading while masked at author events, they saw photos of my book in the hands of various booksellers, and there was something about a theater company adapting my novel. Some…