For a book in which everyone stays firmly on land and the only boat in sight is a skeletal wreck, the sea still plays a major role in “The Essex Serpent,” a historical novel by Sarah Perry that was a surprise best-seller in Britain last year. At the book’s center is the serpent, seen 300 […]
Part of the reason why I’m writing The Career Indie Author is to educate myself about the business. I’ve been writing and publishing – in books and newspapers and other publications – for a couple decades. I’ll be the first to admit that at times I’m not very good at it, whereas there are some […]
This past month, film critics and bloggers were treated to the first look at the Kenneth Branagh Murder on the Orient Express. Like the 1974 movie, it’s stylish, mostly faithful to the book and featuring an all-star cast including Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Michelle Pfeiffer, Penélope Cruz, Josh Gad, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, and Derek […]
Never give up hope. The week before Art on Chocolate 2017 in downtown Hershey, we were looking at 100% chance of rain and unseasonably cool temperatures. Weather predictions in the midstate are notoriously unreliable, but day after day, as we pulled together the equipment and worked on the books, the numbers didn’t change. We braced […]
We all use grocery bags. We buy our groceries, get them bagged, take them home and then, well, what do we do with those one-use bags? Paper grocery bags can be easily recycled, whether at home as gift-wrap, book covers, underlayment under patio pavers, lining trashcans, as compost, or tossed into the recycling bin. Plastic […]
I hate being late to my own rodeo, but better late than never. Last week, we released “Suburban Stockade” (now called “Fed, Safe, and Sheltered”) as a Kindle ebook. It’s exclusive to Amazon, so that we could put it into Kindle Unlimited. The trade paperback has been out for a month, and we set up […]
This post is part of a series about sewing NotQuilts. If you’re unfamiliar with this method, The NotQuilt series begins here. I measured correctly. Each binding strip was long enough to go from one edge to the other. Even the top strip! Because this one was sewn on last, it had to enclose the raw […]
This post is part of a series about sewing NotQuilts. If you’re unfamiliar with this method, The NotQuilt series begins here. Dragon Princess has been determined since day one to thwart my will, but this time I had come thisclose (yes, “thisclose”) to dumping the project. By itself, it was a minor problem, but it […]
This post is part of a series about sewing NotQuilts. If you’re unfamiliar with this method, The NotQuilt series begins here. I’ve been filling in the border, that strip of empty real estate a few inches wide that runs all around the edges of Dragon Princess. This border is actually in eight separate sections. Because […]
The Kenneth Branaugh Orient Express remake made Twitter recently, but in a way that had nothing to do with the movie. It seems that reporters these days are not trained to do any research before opening their mouths or sending a tweet. Back in my days at journalism school, we were taught the unofficial motto […]