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As a devoted reader of my novels*, you know that as Felix or Jack get called to court on occasion, in their pursuit of dealing with offenders. I do love writing a bit of courtroom drama, Cicero long-winded speeches notwithstanding. So, naturally, when I got the summons for jury duty my first thought was “bloody […]

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A few weeks ago, the wife and I went to a used-books fair. We came back with a haul of some interesting finds from the “Old Books” tables. While there were too many others we had to leave behind, I’d like to draw your attention to those below, as I’ve bought them with the explicit […]

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I see variations of this floating around the net: Funnsies aside, here’s an explanation of why authors find it hard to write blurbs for their own books (so you feel smarter) and what to do about it (so you can act smarter). Why do we find it hard to blurb our books? This comes down […]

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This post originally appeared on Simon Williams newsletter. He writes dark fantasy, and we’ve hosted his characters on The Protagonist Speaks. Go check his work out! Readers are often surprised that straight-up historical fiction requires “world-building,” a term most often associated with fantasy and science fiction. I mean, it’s just history, right? Don’t we know […]

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The above cartoon was floating around the internet during the California wildfires of early 2025. Those fires are a tragedy, as is any loss of human life and natural disasters. Having gone through Australia’s “Black Summer” in early 2020, I feel for all my friends in California and hope they are OK. That said, the […]

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You have your manuscript all debugged edited and proofed, sorted out your cover. Before you rush over to hit publish, there’s this thing about producing your book — making the paperback and ebook files. Sure, you could just upload your Word file. In terms of book design, that’s the equivalent of using spell-check for editing […]