After I posted an article about the coincidental ways in which several ostensibly disparate elements came together on the Easter weekend, a couple of people told me they couldn’t open the link to my easy guide for reviewing my book Blood on Their Hands. That’s because the link — really just a Word file address — had to be copied and pasted into a browser, such as Google Chrome, for it to open. I neglected to mention that. Thus, the easy guide wasn’t easy to access. I am hereb

David Fitzgerald While deleting a huge backlog of emails to avoid paying a Google fee on this Easter weekend, I ran across an internet interview posing the question of whether Jesus Christ ever existed. It was written by noted atheist David Fitzgerald. I was interested not just due to the uncanny timing, but because I am finishing a book sent to me by a classmate from the church-affiliated college I attended back in the antebellum days (or so it seems), titled The Case for Ch

Rob Eagar, a book marketing expert and author of several nonfiction books, is the first person I’ve come across in the business of public relations to abandon a neutral position on President Donald Trump, excoriating his attempt to destroy our democracy and calling If Democracy Dies… So Will Your Books Dear author, Do you enjoy writing books about whatever you want whenever you want? Do you cherish the right of free speech to say things that other people might find unpleasant

Tampa Bay Chance encounters of related people or things in unlikely circumstances often elicit the cliché, “It’s a small world.” These days, we all likely would be better off if it were a larger world, so we wouldn’t be crammed as closely together, and the coronavirus wouldn’t spread as readily. A little more physical – not social – distancing, or spacing. But that’s another story – one that has, we hope, reached its denouement with Monday’s initial Pfizer vaccinations. Today

Costco Lantana, Florida It goes without saying that people are staying home much more during the virus (DV) than before the virus (BV) – acronyms which, when combined, form BVD, which was a type of popular men’s underwear that my dad wore decades ago (and is still made by Fruit of the Loom). Where am I going with this slightly deranged observation? Costco. For books, not for BVDs, or even DVDs. Every time I visit the store in my neighborhood south of West Palm Beach – probabl

Bookstore reading A pandemic can do more than send people to their early graves, create cabin fever for those quarantining or just staying home to reduce their chances of infection, and send the economy into a tailspin. For authors launching books, it makes for a rocky road. Yours truly hit the trail with his new novel, Blood on Their Hands, in early May – just as the COVID-19 virus was kicking into high gear and barreling across the planet. With everything shut down and clos

TouchPoint Press I’ve never thought of my authorial activities as a business, but here I am blocked by the same impediments that most enterprises are facing these days due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. (I had to look up the “novel” part of that phrase to discover its meaning in this context, because I was darned sure COVID-19 wasn’t fiction.) Authors everywhere who have been readying to launch a book are stuck on hold. While my new novel, the legal thriller BLOOD ON THEI

Mark Twain When one ponders the state of the bookstore industry, a famous line attributed to Mark Twain comes to mind: “The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.” Tom Corson-Knowles Reports of a death knell for the print book and its retailers apparently are just as wrong. One such assertion was contained in a promotional email recently propagated by Tom Corson-Knowles, a book marketing entrepreneur and originator of book publisher TCK Publishing. The piece reminde

The deed is done. I have a publishing contract for my new novel, tentatively titled BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS. I suspect it will stick – the title, I mean, not the blood. Well, actually, the blood … Okay, that’s enough. Don’t want to give away the plot. What I will say is that the book is about police brutality toward blacks, and was inspired by an incident in my locale more than 10 years ago that happened under the radar, but which I was made aware of. While the novel  presents a

After a long period of newsletter inaction, your not-so-faithful scribe is back in the business of the written word. The drought was precipitated (that seems like a paradox; I actually saw a pair o’ docks where the water line was quite low) by a lengthy, exasperating effort to find an email management service that I, a technology averse writer, could both navigate and afford, what with the hefty growth of my subscriber list. Besides that, I’ve been immersed in two principal a

The life of an author is full of ups and downs, like the Amazon rankings on hiser (my gender-neutral pronoun) books. One becomes addicted to checking those rankings, even while knowing the Amazon algorithm is a mystery, and the rankings aren’t always commensurate with sales. Sun For example, my book Murder in Palm Beach: The Homicide That Never Died, ranked way up there in recent weeks, zooming to No. 1 Best Seller status in an Amazon Kindle category and remaining there for 1

Remember the teeter-totter in the school playground? Do they still have those? I mean, it’s been at least 20 or 30 years since I left grade school. Okay, maybe a few more; I don’t count the years anymore, since I’m not good at advanced mathematics. As a kindergartner in Muskegon, Mich., and an elementary pupil (yes, pupil; you’re not a student till at least high school) in schools around Des Moines, Iowa, I loved playing on the up-and-down board with a playmate on the other e

Kai Ryssdal Kai Ryssdal, host of Marketplace on National Public Radio, was interviewing James Patterson Monday evening when I tuned in, missing most of what he was opining vis a vis books and the part Amazon has played in the decline of bookstores. The celebrated author, mainly of thrillers but lately of children’s books, has garnered considerable publicity for his attempts to interest youngsters in reading. James Patterson That’s all well and good, and I applaud him for it –

FREE!!! FREEBIE!!! A FREE BOOK!!! Was that loud enough? Do I have your attention? Okay, here’s the deal: Tomorrow, Monday, January 4 of this blessed new year, my book will be available at no charge – in other words, free (did I mentioned that?). I’m talking about the Amazon Kindle edition, which all of you technophiles can download onto your various portable devices and read to your heart’s content. Just go to amzn.com/B00QU3XIDM, and click on Kindle. The book is a novel, MUR