On February 27 in 1869, The Pilot, an Irish-American newspaper, printed a disturbing letter from a Catholic priest that led me to do a bit of true crime investigation. The priest was writing on behalf of a girl named Margaret Nolan, 19. Ten or eleven years prior, she had been kidnapped while playing in the […]
Ever heard of Keokuk, Iowa? Some interesting history on an unusual location…. FOUNDING A NEWSPAPER Iowa was admitted to the Union in December of 1846, and its population was about 500. Around that time, a writer named Robert B. Ogden and his brother decided to head over to Iowa to open up a newspaper. Traveling […]
Myst: The Book of Atrus by Rand Miller My rating: 4 of 5 stars If you’ve ever enjoyed the Myst games, you will appreciate this book, which tells the background of how the Myst island came to be. The authors go very in-depth as to how world writing works, the mistakes that can be made, […]
You can now read Grimoire Society of Dark Acts on Android and Fire devices! Just go to the Kindle app, the Store tab, and tap the Kindle Vella link in the top menu, or you can search for my book title or my name. From Amazon’s email: BREAKING!Kindle Vella stories are now available to readers in […]
On this day in 1860, the entire front page of The Pilot, a Boston newspaper, was dedicated to “The Calamity at Lawrence”, a now forgotten disaster. The Pemberton Mills at Lawrence in Massachusetts suddenly collapsed, crushing an estimated 300-500 workers. One in four workers were killed. The building consisted of one six-story main building and […]
A.F. Stewart’s new show on Go Indie Now, “Words That Kill”, just reached the end of its first season, and I was fortunate enough to be interviewed for the final episode! The editing is beautiful, with lots of great images that I think you’ll enjoy, curated specifically for my interview. A.F. and I talked about […]
I’m going to be live January 15 doing writing sprints with two other awesome authors! Join us 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET for sprinting and author camaraderie. This is all part of the Winter Writer Retreat 2022. I can’t wait to work on nanopunk book 2. I’m working now on getting the first book […]
Mary Astor’s Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936 by Edward Sorel My rating: 4 of 5 stars Sorel does a wonderful job of bringing lots of Mary Astor’s life that most people won’t know about to the forefront and building up why she became the woman became—multiple marriages to deadbeat men, an […]
A Stranger in the Mirror by Sidney Sheldon My rating: 5 of 5 stars What a journey! Sheldon captures quite a lot of what I know to be true in Hollywood based on the many biographies and autobiographies of stars I’ve read. Everything is believable, and he brings us so close to the characters, all […]
Sea Glass by Anita Shreve My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book turned out to be so much better than I had thought when I first started it. It starts with quite a lot of description, which turned me off immediately; too much description in the beginning leaves me bored since there’s not enough […]