When I was about twelve, I was ready to publish my first novel.  I hadn’t exactly written it yet, but I knew I wanted to be a published author, and I read in a magazine about this outfit called Vantage Press which, for a four-figure fee, would publish my book for me.  I figured that [...]

When Olivia Rupprecht of HCI Books approached me a year ago and invited me to write one of the launch titles for True Vows, HCI’s new imprint of romances based on the love affairs of real people, I said yes.  I thought—silly me—that writing a novelization of an actual romance would be easy.  Kind of [...]

I recently reconnected with an old classmate of mine (well no, she’s not old; neither am I) who is an English professor and a short story writer.  She said she believes fiction does one of two things: it takes a specific incident and expands it into a universal idea, or it takes a universal idea [...]

It shames me to admit that once, years ago, I made fun of my grandmother for being superstitious.  We were walking down a street in Brooklyn, and we passed on opposite sides of a lamppost, and I refused to say “bread and butter.”  She became furious.  According to her, if two people moving in the [...]