About a month ago Brian Laul called me up and wanted to know if I was interested in being part of his inaugural “Book Trail”. “I’m an author, Brian. I don’t want to hike anywhere.” Turns out, the Book Trail, organised by A-B Street Library, Rainbow Crossing and half a dozen coffee shops around Campbelltown, …
There’s a new Nick Harding case. Actually, two of them for the price of one. A very rich old dude is about to kick off and is desperate to make amends with his estranged son. Nick is contacted by the old guy’s lawyer with a task: Find the son, convince him to get in contact …
It’s that wonderful time of year when people get shivved in your local electronics store while in pursuit of the last PS5, drive-bys resolve parking disputes and the staff at the lay-by department have shotguns strapped under the counter, one hand never more than a hair’s-breadth away from the trigger. It’s getting tense. I try …
Digging through some old posts on older versions of this site (on different platforms) I came across this, reprinted in its entirety, unedited (other than formatting). Originally published on July 30th, 2009 Ladies and genuflects, I would like to introduce you to Mr. Eamonn Shute. An entirely fictional creation, living in Miami for the past eighteen months, …
Super-duper quick post. I do have a scrivener template I use. Two of them, actually. But the many sites out there linking to it are linking to an old defunct post. I’ll add it back to my site shortly and let the linking sites know the new address.
By definition. The tests are designed so the average score is 100. Sixty-eight percent of the people taking the test fall into the range of plus or minus 15% of the mean, or between 85 and 115. So I have to assume there is a significant skew downward to results lately because a large percentage …
Now if I’m totally honest, when my employer told us all to go home last March (2020, of course), I didn’t mind one bit. We are a bit of an insular family, anyway. I got rid of my hour long commute, could barbecue some snags at lunch and got an extra hour sleep at night. …
This isn’t an advertisement for Netgalley, but it sure is going to sound like one. I have a publisher’s account at Netgalley. I give them a fair bit of money, and they present my book for review by readers, booksellers, libraries, and the like. You can join for free, as a reader, if you’d like. …
Nick Harding is an idealistic Private Investigator, trying to eke out a living after a spectacularly boring career in Financial Crimes with the Australian Federal Police. The very recent widow of the billionaire founder of Dvorak Kars — Australia’s first and only EV manufacturer — hires him to root out the fraud costing what is …
I bang on this a lot, and if the truth be told, this is only a minor component of a good story, but one most often missing. Stories have a structure. Generally, three acts. There are other structures, but they all resolve, in one way or another, to three acts. There are certain things a …