Last week, I wrote about writers balancing the art of leaving the audience wanting more and answering all their promises. When I wrote this, I had no idea my next book on my reading list would do just this. (Read on without concern as this will be spoiler-free.)

V.E. Schwab in her new book, The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, met my expectations perfectly. By the end, she fills in all the blanks and foreshadows what the future will hold.

Of course, I wanted her to continue the story, but I didn’t need her to. She left it up to…

For millennia, the art of storytelling was practiced around the campfire, with our forefathers telling tales to their eager tribesmen. We also see stories in our earliest cave drawings depicting our hunter-gather ancestors in their struggles to survive. These stories were part entertainment, but served a greater purpose in transferring knowledge to the next generation.

It wasn’t till much later, in 3100 BCE, that the Sumerians invented written language. They used words to document daily business and commerce. Oddly enough, it took another 1000 years before our first stories were written down. And once we got a taste of them…

How often do you read a book and are left disappointed at the end, feeling that much was left unanswered? You can imagine the reaction, hastily closing the book, turning it over in your hands, searching the back cover for the last chapter we missed. Looking for something, anything, that would answer our questions.

There is nothing more frustrating than an author that doesn’t fulfill a promise made to the reader. In his Masterclass, Dan Brown calls these promises made between the author and the reader, contracts. The contract simply states that by the end of the book, the author…

One of the challenges of being a writer is we don’t get to experience our writing the way readers do.

So you can imagine my surprise the other day while skimming the Google results for a reference. I came across a story of a person’s experience on Medium. It was posted to Reddit and was full of some great information.

I clicked on the Reddit account, looking to see if they had more knowledge to share. It wasn’t until the profile page came up that I realized the responder was me.

This gave me a good chuckle as I hadn’t…

Valentine’s day…the day we shower loved ones with candies and bouquets of roses. Hoping to win that special someone’s heart, or maybe seeking a fresh start. Ah, love, the heart wants what it wants.

But let’s not forget that other national holiday observed today. Today we also celebrate the ultimate gift — the giving of life to another.

Today is National Donor Day and it always takes me back in time to a seemingly random day that led to a shift in my perspective.

Shortly after graduating from college, I took a job with the government, which required me to…

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Stephen King for years. In my teens and twenties, I read many of his books. While my friends were raving about them, I would stay out of the conversations because I didn’t want to be the guy that didn’t like Stephen King. I thought it was the genre, not being a fan of horror books in general, that had to be it.

Years later, when his book 11/22/63 came out, I thought this has to be the one. Time travel is one of my favorite tropes, and I’m a sucker for it in any…

There isn’t a single one of us that lives without regrets. We bottle them up, and they come out at the least opportune moments. Choices that we make. Roads and paths not taken. People we let go or held on to, all of these experiences well up inside us.

Some of us can let it go, live in the moment, and forget the past. Others of us live each day with the dread that a wrong decision will derail our lives in unthinkable ways.

Sometimes a book can do what would usually take years in therapy. Books can set you…

AN ONGOING SERIES FOR 2021

Books are expensive, and buying multiple books a month can be akin to a few trips out to a nice restaurant. With the past year, most of us had, it’s been easier to justify the spending on entertainment. We aren’t going on vacations at this point, so spending a little extra each month to take a vacation in our imagination is well worth it.

Having a yearly subscription to Audible gives me access to 12 titles a year. But many of us can go through those books in a few months. …