For the last few days, I have been obsessively checking my email.  I check it when I get up.  I check it during breakfast.  I check it again when I arrive at the coffee shop where I work.  After that, I check it every five to ten minutes during the day.  Why?  What is driving…

The Guide to Literary Agents—an extremely useful book that helped me to find my agent—suggests that budding authors go to book fairs to meet potential agents.  So in the spring of 2008, I dutifully hopped on the train from Paris and headed to England for the London Book Fair.  Unfortunately, what The Guide didn’t tell…

Last week, I finished draft 3 of my next novel, Eagle (pats self on back).  The third draft is my favorite one to write.  Why?  Well, in my second blog entry (Finishing the Novel), I wrote about how producing multiple drafts makes writing easier.  Instead of worrying about plot, characters, and my prose all at…

In honor of the Academy Awards next Sunday, I have decided to write on one of my favorite subjects: movies.  And while this blog is mainly a convenient excuse to discuss my favorite films of the year (see the list below), it is also an opportunity to discuss how to become a better novelists by…

I have grown tired of winter.  The Friday before last, it snowed twenty inches (that’s 50 centimeters for those of you across the pond) in Washington, DC.  Three days later, the city was hit with another blizzard that dropped fifteen more inches.  Plows have pushed most of the drifts off to the side, creating mountainous…

Finding a story is not hard.  There are thousands upon thousands of them.  In fact, I have far more stories that I want to write than I have time to write them.  I found most of these stories without looking.  I’m an historian, so when I read about an historical event or person that might…

“Write what you know.”  I haven’t been to a lot of writers’ workshops or taken a lot (or any) courses on writing, but that is one piece of advice that I have heard plenty of times.  “Write what you know” makes sense.  You can best tap into your characters’ emotions and states of mind when…

Last weekend my wife and I went to the Crystal City mall to return some clothes.  (I love the name “Crystal City.”  It’s evocative of The Wizard of Oz or maybe Superman’s fortress of solitude.  In fact, it’s an ugly, concrete, soulless suburb, filled with hotels for business travelers.  The mall is nice, though.)  We…

After weeks of gloomy days and bitter cold, D.C. is once again sunny and (relatively) warm.  It’s a great day to be outside—a not so great day to be sitting in a coffee shop.  Today is one of those days where the last thing I want to do is to write.  (Well, maybe not the…

On the weekend before Christmas, Washington, DC was hit by a blizzard that dropped sixteen inches of snow on the city in twenty-four hours.  DC is not equipped to deal with that kind of weather.  Cars were buried.  The roads were impassible.  Even the subway ground to a near standstill.  At the end of the…