I own an old car; if my wish comes to pass, I will soon be able to say owned, as in past tense. It is a 1967 Austin-Healey BJ8 3000 Mark III, a long name for a car, so when I bought it, I renamed it Mrs. Peel, after the character in the old TV . . .
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We don’t have a dog in New York, at least not as of this writing. We did have a dog, once, a golden retriever named Molly. In our collective mind’s eye, she was the perfect dog. Gentle, sweet-tempered, obedient, and kind of a chicken, though she could sound very ferocious if there was a door . . .
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While I love life in New York City, there are times when I miss the supermarkets of my suburban childhood, places so big and sprawly that their roofs could have doubled as runways for jumbo jets. Grocery stores in Manhattan tend to be small, cramped places filled with products marked with dubious expiration dates and priced . . .
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With even McDonald’s offering artisanal fare—an “Artisan Grilled Chicken Sandwich”—it occurred to me that I really ought to do something artisanal myself before the trend toward artisanal and craft products wore itself out, so I decided that for my next project I would produce a wholly artisanal book. First, though, I had to look up . . .
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A surprising number of readers—meaning more than one—have expressed an interest in how I go about organizing the materials I collect while researching my books. This perplexes me, because frankly I would rather watch 24 hours of Norwegian “slow TV,” than read about how writers find and manage information, and if you want to see . . .
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So, my new book, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, has now launched, and the reception has been amazing. I just finished the first leg of my very long book tour, which took me from Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, N.Y., to Odyssey Books in Northampton, Mass., to Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, to . . .
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I’m pleased to say that my new book, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, is about to launch. I feel I should whack it with a bottle of champagne, since it is, after all, about a ship. The book becomes available officially on March 10, the same day I will set out on a . . .
Read MoreMy latest book is very nearly done. The book has a cover, which I love. There’s something austere and desolate about that long wake receding toward the horizon. It’s a very appropriate image, especially given that the book’s title, Dead Wake, is a maritime term that describes the fading disturbance that lingers on the surface . . .
Read MoreI’m now in that phase of writing a book that I enjoy most. The research is more or less done, and I’ve written a passable first draft and a decent—maybe even good—second draft. Now I have a book. It has a beginning, middle, and end. And now I can go through all my notes and . . .
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Whenever I write a book, there comes a time when I start reading portions of the manuscript aloud to myself. It’s a sure-fire way to spot flaws in grammar, cadence, and voice. I’ve found that reading aloud also helps me to gauge, and adjust, the emotive power of individual passages, especially if I read them . . .
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