On sale now! What do I feel?

For starters, I feel like it’s about time!  I finished writing Sweet Salt Air a year ago, and though my publisher needed these months to publish the book well – and they have! – I feel like you all have waited forever.  On one hand, I want you hungry, so that you’ll race out and…

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Snapshots of SWEET SALT AIR

Last week’s blog talked about which character in this book is my favorite, but I have other favorites here.  Since Sweet Salt Air is a highly sensual book, I’m thinking see, smell, feel, hear, and taste.  I’m calling them snapshots, because they’re just quick little moments from the book.  I guess that makes this blog…

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Are you imaginative?

I get ideas from what I read in the news.  Here’s a perfect example.  I logged on this morning to catch the headlines at cnn.com and saw this one, “How ‘GOT’ will end,” and immediately clicked through. GOT is Game of Thrones, and I’m addicted to it.  This Sunday is the Season 3 finale, but…

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My favorite character in SWEET SALT AIR

  Do I play favorites when it comes to my characters?  That depends on how you define playing favorites. For starters, I couldn’t spend a year writing a book about people I didn’t like.  That said, if each of them is totally loveable, the book is boring.  Also, I like to see growth in my characters, which…

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Where SWEET SALT AIR came from

Most of my books are inspired by things I read about in the newspaper. The inspiration for Sweet Salt Air was much more personal.  I have three sons, all of whom have recently had children, and when each of those babies was born, its umbilical cord blood was harvested, frozen, and stored. The premise is…

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How much of me is in SWEET SALT AIR

June 18.  What seemed like a long way off a year ago is coming fast.  You all have been so patient.  I thank you for that. I just reread Sweet Salt Air.  I mean, wow, I’ve been distracted from it.  I’ve probably read twenty books since I finished writing it, and now I’m working on my next book,…

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Naming the characters in my next book

You’ve heard of Dennis Lehane, right?  Since he’s a home town boy, my local press is all over him.  So I wasn’t surprised to hear tv reports that his dog, Tessa (yup, that’s her pictured above), had disappeared on Christmas Eve and that he was offering to name a character in his next book after…

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Why I’m not a book reviewer

I’m going to be very careful here not to slam those who do review books.  I admire many of them.  They read constantly and have a wide enough repertoire to give them a grand perspective on books. But the contents of a book review is about more than reading.  It’s about the reviewer’s personal history…

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Dealing with the loss of my characters

Readers feel this.  You’ve been engrossed in a book for however long it takes to read it and then, suddenly, the characters are gone.  You write me asking what they’ll do now and whether they’ll ever be back. But if you miss them, think of what I’m feeling when I finish writing a book. Take Sweet…

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Are you a typo freak?

Inevitably, when each of my books first comes out, I get notes from readers catching typos.  “ Doesn’t anyone proofread anymore?” they ask plaintively. The answer?  YES!  I carefully read through looking for errors, as do my editor, my agent, my assistant, and more people at the publishing house than I care to count.  And still, when the…

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