One of the questions that writers are most often asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” I love it when what I see in my mind’s eye gets transferred to the page and then zapped into the brains of my readers. Sometimes I do wish we had mental projectors, so I could see what concepts look like to other people…
Read MoreI’ve made a commitment that I will no longer begin a novel––or a short story for that matter––without first knowing how it ends. Good endings stick with you. They don’t have to be “happy” either. Casablanca would not be the classic that it is without that sad goodbye on the tarmac. I believe that what makes a good ending is that the characters get what they deserve. I had a film professor in college who said, “Think about the Rolling Stones song… your character can’t always get what they want, but they should get what they need.”
Read MoreOne night, during a Covid-induced insomniatic haze, I started to think about this vixen from my dream. Could she be the basis for a book? In the quiet witching hours I sketched out the initial plot for Mermaid of Venice. Like most other people on planet Earth, I’d heard J.K. Rowling’s story of the fateful train ride in which she imagined Harry Potter from start to finish. The genesis of that beloved series seemed like bullshit to me, but the following day, I could not stop thinking about Gia Acquaviva, and in a few hours, I, myself, had the skeletons of six books plotted.
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