So there I was, descending down into Egyptian tombs and crypts built three or four thousand years before, doing research for the Eye of Isis novels. The craftsmanship is such that it does not require much sleight of mind to imagine yourself back in that day. Although, sometimes? They jerk you right back into the…
Henry II to Richard II, 250 years’ worth of Plantagenet kings in 500 plus pages. Written briskly and with humor, the narrative hits all the highlights of this era in British history without missing the low points, of which there were plenty, and debunking myths along the way. Henry II hid out in Ireland for…
[an Alaska short story, written for The Mysterious North] THEIR OVERCOATS STEAMED in the red-hot glow of the tiny stove, the steam rising to form ice on the ceiling of the cramped canvas tent. After a day’s slogging up and down the pass, they were each man and woman among them soaked to the skin,…
This photo was taken from the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan during my visit to Egypt in December 2019. And it was the direct inspiration for this snippet from Theft of an Idol: The banks of the canal slipped past. Two boys in a rickety rowboat paddled out to catch hold of the rail and hitch…
[a short story inspired by my father, written for Two of the Deadliest] …landing strips in Bush Alaska weren’t that hard to come by, and he found one mere minutes after he started looking, a pale scar on a leveled-off foothill at the mouth of a canyon carved out by a rushing, unruly creek. There…
No one wanted me to write the Eye of Isis series. Business associates said, “No, no, keep writing Kate Shugak novels, they are what sells.” My agents didn’t want me to write them because they couldn’t sell them without a multi-book contract that included a, you guessed it, Kate Shugak novel or a Liam Campbell…
I wrote the first Eye of Isis novel, Death of an Eye, before I went to Egypt. When it came time to write the second in the series (Disappearance of a Scribe) I knew I had to have a better sense of the Red Land and the Black Land than I could get on YouTube,…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that any book you truly love is in need of a properly annotated edition. Here is one such. Let me just start quoting: “…A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!” Mrs. Bennet on Mr. Bingley, of course,…
Read more One cannot ever consider Mr. Collins too presumptuous.
[from “The Perfect Gift,” written for Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, an anthology featuring werewolves at Christmas.] The Alaska state troopers in Anchorage worked out of a five-story rectangular building with a dull gray exterior and an interior cut into matching gray cubicles. Littered surfaces of metal desks were lit by fluorescent tubes, every third or fourth…
Read more “Maybe I just have a sixth sense for big good-looking doofuses.”
Must be Tuesday …ten days from deadline… 4:20a Eyes pop open in realization that expository lump in Chapter 11 is neither informative nor amusing. 4:44a Bitterly acknowledge that there is no getting back to sleep and stagger into the kitchen in search of coffee. 5a Sit down at desk, open book, find section, rewrite, wonder…