We Would Be Honored If You Would Join Us
Hi, All. As I may have mentioned once or twice, Summer of Long Knives, my new thriller set in pre-war Nazi Germany, is due to come out in mid-September. Not…
Influences: To Know Kommissar Rolf Wundt, Check Out Tibbs, Burakov, and Rockford
The protagonist of Summer of Long Knives doesn't have a historical counterpart. He's a product of imagination inspired by three different detectives from film and television. The first is Virgil Tibbs from In…
Reinhard Heydrich: The Young Evil God of Death
Like all the most ambitious people, Reinhard Heydrich was a collector of titles: SS Obergruppenfuehrer, Head of the SD, Head of the Prussian Gestapo, Head of Gestapo for the Reich,…
Win A Signed Manuscript Copy of Summer of Long Knives
First off, there were no winners for So Over It #22. The answer is N. Sheffield Avenue in Chicago. The rooftops overlook Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. The…
Does Summer of Long Knives Pass the Page 99 Test?
The page 99 test arises from a quote from Ford Madox Ford, author of The Good Soldier, and one of the most important forces in early 20th century literary modernism: "Open the…
The Summer of Long Knives Playlist
I write to music. I've never conducted any sort of survey to see how common that is among fiction writers, but I do it. The rhythm keeps me moving when…
The Fun Bits Of Editing Galleys for Summer of Long Knives
--Research the origin of the expression "Bull dyke". (It's actually a fascinating story.) --Discriminate between the terms "in stir" and "in the stir". --Research why, and exactly when, Germany switched…
The Worst Book Cover Ever
Only yesterday I was making a few suggestions about what the Summer of Long Knives cover should be. Basically, I suggested a theme and left it at that. The cover…
Location, Location, Location: Fiction and the Anthropic Principle
Nichole Bernier's blog post on locations and their impact on fiction got me thinking about the settings in my own work and why I picked them. Bernier starts her post…
Are You Pondering What I’m Pondering?
I'm still picking at parts of Summer of Long Knives. Some of it feels necessary, but a good deal of it is neurosis. It's usually at this point that I become convinced…