WELCOME!

Writing is a solitary pursuit--the imagination guiding the hand moving the pen. I'm pretty old-school, valuing the work of good editors and the revisions process before letting my words go public. But life is short, right? And sometimes, just sometimes, we need to spout off.

Sunday, May 31, 2015

These Good Hands is in bookstores now. Based on the life of French sculptor Camille Claudel, it's a story about misogyny and mental illness--and in equal measure, about compassion and the power of art, and of writing itself.

Monday, January 26, 2015

A long time coming...




A few mementos from the Vichy era in France--WW2-issue coins, a Nazi pin--and a key from a house once dear to my heart. Keys figure large in the novel, set in the asylum for the insane at Montdevergues, France.


These Good Hands--my fourth novel, a decade in the making--is due out this April. Can't wait to see the book in print. The past month has been like house arrest, doing the edits--but all good, all satisfying and great working with a fantastic editor. His toughness and keen eye have helped bring out the story's best. A whole lotta darling-slaying has been going on, the process that separates the good from the dross. Funny how we writers write a lot of stuff for ourselves--stuff we may need to know while telling ourselves the story, but stuff our readers can happily do without. It takes a really good editor to point this out and to help us cut the stuff that, in one famous writer's set of rules, is what nobody reads. Onwards.