Thanksgiving is a time for family, so naturally it starts me thinking about what, exactly, family is. Coming from a troubled and toxic family of origin, and not having spoken to my one remaining family member (my brother) since February, I think I’ve given this topic more thought than your average person. So I am taking the liberty of sharing my ramblings on family with you this Thanksgiving.

Broken down to its most basic elements, families are supposed to provide love and support. Familie...

My brother George left this world one year ago today at age 57. At the time, I considered it one of life’s great ironies that a man who never drank—and who was unfailingly obsessive about his diet and weight—died so young of liver cirrhosis.

My brother was a dedicated servant to his chiropractic patients and most in his element when giving advice about nutrition and health. He lived and breathed health-related issues far beyond chiropractic, and was always ready to impart his knowled...

I was recently contacted, out of the blue, by a traditionally-published author for an honest review of her latest novel (tell me, how cool is that?). Although I already had the book on my Goodreads "To Read" shelf, I was afraid I might hate it. And then what? Unlike some, I would never trash a novel after being asked to review it. But at the same time, I couldn't very well accept a free copy and then not post a review--at least not without telling the author why I didn't enjoy her book enou...

I saw a rather intriguing movie last week—Margaret, in which Anna Paquin (playing 17-year-old Lisa Cohen) performs a powerful scene with Allison Janney as Monica, the woman hit and dismembered by a New York City bus after Lisa thoughtlessly distracted the driver over a stupid cowboy hat. Lying in the street in Lisa’s arms, her severed leg lodged beneath the bus’s rear wheel about ten feet away, Monica asks Lisa, “Am I dead?”

It is a gruesome, bloody, and emotional scene—one wh...

My fourth novel, Stage Daughter, is barely hot off the presses (http://stagedaughter.com) and I am already sniffing around for a fresh idea for my next story. I want to write something edgy and different—a story that pushes the envelope with emotion and controversy. But how do I top a twelve-year-old girl reconnecting her hapless, stressed-out single mom with her devout, unwitting married Muslim dad? I am toying with the idea of writing about a lonely male protagonist who works as a secur...

Times may be tough, but it’s a great time to be in the self-publishing business. That is, if you happen to sell some variant of snake oil meant to transform an unknown writer into a best-selling author. Book ads. Virtual tours. Paid Tweeting—the possibilities are endless. The only catch is, these marketing devices can only deliver on one promise: To keep our fantasies alive while quickly emptying our wallets.

If this sounds a little like prostitution, there are definitely parallels b...

Like many people, I feel perplexed and dismayed by the not-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. I want to believe that those six women—who heard the evidence on both sides—did their jobs and made the right decision. But as a lawyer, I am not so naïve as to believe that justice prevails in all instances, especially when questions of race are involved.

This verdict has people up in arms. On one side, folks are demonstrating, decrying, and destroying. At the opposite extreme, c...

I have been doing a great deal of Internet research on Islam for my upcoming fourth novel, Stage Daughter. Aziz, one of three main characters, is a Muslim man, so I have been undergoing a crash online course to better understand how he might think, feel, and react in different circumstances. When not worried about dark-suited CIA agents appearing at my doorstep, I have learned some rather interesting things.

Naturally, all religions have their more bizarre teachings and their more extremist f...

I just finished reading T.C. Boyle’s San Miguel, a brilliant work of historical fiction that chronicles the lives of two sheep ranching families who resided on this remote island off the coast of Santa Barbara during the late nineteenth century and the 1930’s. Mirantha Waters, the story’s first female protagonist, loathed the isolation and merciless weather on San Miguel island and was often at odds with her husband. In contrast, Elizabeth Lester, the island’s subsequent female homest...

As we enter a new year in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook rampage, there is precious little we agree on where gun control is concerned. So I’d like to begin with these fairly incontrovertible but conflicting premises:

(1)   Criminals and insane people do not respect the law.

(2)   “Bad guys” will always have access to guns, no matter how tightly they are regulated.

(3)   We each have a fundamental right to protect ourselves—and others—from violence, invasion, and threats of injury. ...

The Floater just received another five-star review, for which I am thrilled and extremely thankful. In it, the reviewer characterizes Norma’s boyfriend, Oscar, as “a bit of a hothead.” This got me wondering, is it no longer acceptable to express anger in an honest and appropriate way?

Oscar gets pissed when (among other things) (1) Norma slams the bathroom door on his hand; (2) the firm where he’s worked as a supervisor for 14 years demotes him to mail runner; and (3) Norma’s sister,...

Someone once told me that fiction writers construct their stories from a personal mosaic of life experience, casual observation, and imagination. I have found this to be true of own my writing (though for me, the hodgepodge can feel more like the makings of a bad dream), especially when it comes to crafting characters. 

I start by conjuring a mental sketch of someone I knew once upon a time. Okay, I am going to stop right there, because that confession makes me seem devious and unimagina...

If you think your manuscript’s finished, it probably isn’t. How do we know when we’ve hit that literary “sweet spot” when we deem our work “perfect”? We can’t. We only think we can. Perfection isn’t ours to judge—that call gets made by friends, agents, and ultimately (hopefully!) readers.
 

If we hit our mark, we may have a hit. This is perhaps (but not always) the sign of a great writer. But if we don’t, then we’re simply not as wonderful as we’d like to think we ar...