Newsletter 002, November 12, 2021 Hi — (About the image above) I love music, and growing up in the 1960’s the Beatles were a favorite of mine (they still are). When my wife and I went on a vacation to the UK in 2010, I naturally had to go to Abbey Road, walk the crosswalk …
On June 25th I posted “Coffee and the Writer,” a few observations about my penchant for having a warm beverage nearby while I write. A few days ago I ran across a note I emailed to myself from Baltimore in November 2002. It was about a coffee incident I encountered at SC2002 (the Supercomputing Conference …
Recently I was asked to interview for a member profile for a group I belong to, The Gutsy Great Novelist. Here’s a copy of it. Let’s begin with your origin story. When did you first realize you wanted to write a novel? Was there a particular person or experience that inspired you I think I’ve …
fallow, adjective. 2: dormant, inactive —used especially in the phrase to lie fallow A New First Post The final posts in my previous blog were written in 2016, roughly five years ago. What was happening between then and now? Why did I let those websites lie fallow all that time? I could make a number …
[Originally posted on my former blog, Michael Runs the Gamut] I had tweeted about it on Twitter, and posted about it on the Jagged Man website. [2021 Note: The Jagged Man website is currently dead. It will likely be resuscitated when a second edition of the book goes on sale. Sometime in 2023?] Although I …
[Originally posted on my former blog, Michael Runs the Gamut] For the past several years I’ve submitted queries (although not nearly often enough), and pitched my novels at conferences, with no success. Okay, I lied at least a couple of times in that first sentence. In 2002, I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, …
[Originally posted on my former blog, Michael Runs the Gamut] It’s almost time for the annual Writers’ League of Texas Agents & Editors Conference in Austin (June 27 through the 29th this year). I’ve signed up have a 10-minute consultation with three of the agents who will be attending. All Spring, as new editors and …
[Originally posted on my former blog, Michael Runs the Gamut] A couple of weeks ago, a question was asked at the [now defunct] Fiction Writers and Editors Group at LinkedIn. It was simply, “What are you working on?” After I had responded, along with a hundred or so other writers, it occurred to me that …
[Originally posted on my former blog, Michael Runs the Gamut] At last summer’s WLT Agents & Editors Conference, in Austin, Texas (June 21-23, 2013), I was finally ready to seriously pitch my thriller, The Jagged Man. I thought the book was ready, too. I had been working on it for several years, but I felt …
I’ve been to two writing retreats in the last six months, and they were both wonderful (and an extremely rare experience for me). I don’t know what your writing situation is like, but let me tell you a little bit about mine. I retired in 2009, after nearly forty years in the workforce (thirty of …