My Lovely Blog

The strange thing about writing a book is the number of people MOST OF WHOM I'VE NEVER MET who are reading words that I wrote and hopefully laughing in the right places. My Twitter followers went from 750 to almost 1,000 and quite a few of those new people are actual people. (Which is astonishing if you know anything about Twitter.)

Welcome all of you!

So I feel like I need a "Getting to Know You" post. Handily, I was tagged awhile back by fellow Crooked Cat author Kim Walker for something called the "My Lovely Blog Hop".

The title of which makes me feel like I might need a new author pic...

Why hello, I didn't see you there! Welcome to my lovely blog...

I'm not sure how the thing was named, but who am I to complain about a chance to sit on a park bench under a flowering tree making passers by uncomfortable? Six questions are posed and I shall take them in order and possibly combine a few: First memory, books, libraries/bookshops, what's your passion, learning, writing.

On my first memory...

My first cogent memory is my parents' wedding. It was my mom's second (hence my sister and I) and my dad's first. I was three and being a total squirrel, filling my pockets with cocktail peanuts and those chalky dinner mints that were everywhere back in the 1970's. Dad picked me up and held me on his hip through the ceremony, mostly just to get me to stop screwing around and it cemented in my mind that This Was the Beginning of Something.

On Books, Libraries, and Bookshops...

All my favorite pieces of furniture are all designed for the care and feeding of a book habit.
My dad brought to our family an insatiable love of reading and cars. My sister got the car thing and I started acquiring a library. By this point in my life, "Library" is another word for home.

In 1998 I left my college job with REI for a management gig at Barnes & Noble, followed by a 9+ year stint at Borders before a very weird dinner party where I found myself in a conversation with Mercedes Lackey and Stephen Brust (picks up the dropped names and puts them back in his pockets) convinced me to spend more time writing my own stories even if it meant less time to read other peoples.

I doubt either of them remembers me, but it was the beginning of the end for me at Borders. The company and the store I worked in were changing for the worse and I made my exit. You can read more about that here if you're interested: Beyond Borders -- The Borders bankruptcy as seen by this former bookseller.

I love bookstores but I mostly spend my money at the independents these days, in part because that's all that's left around here. Which is both awesome and strangely sad. Chain or independent, bookstores are the repositories of our cultural aspiration to be well-read and literate. And too many towns lost their independent bookstores in the kerfuffle when Borders and Barnes & Noble were building their megastores in every town on the map at what turned out to be an unsustainable rate. And now the chains are gone and we have... not much really.

Hopefully new stores will arise to take their places.

What's your passion?

You're soaking in it.

On Learning...

I have the peculiar skill set common to writers of absorbing information quickly, retaining it for the duration of a project, and then erasing it to make room for the next thing on my list. Writers are human chalkboards. (Not dry erase boards, mind you, the smell of the markers gives me a headache.)

As I often say: "I can pick a lock or repair a watch. I can conduct surgeries, examine corpses for forensic evidence, bind a book, dress a deer, identify or concoct poisons, and reproduce Lord Nelson's flagship down to the last knot and nail. If necessary, I can also conduct a Latin Mass, reproduce the scripts of Carolingian scribes, shoe a horse, summon Cthulhu, or swear like a WWII soldier. I can walk the streets of forgotten cities in lost kingdoms and navigate the alleys of Calcutta in the year 2010. And I can do it all from the safety and convenience of my writing chair."

Some of these things I can do because I'm weird that way. For the rest of it, I have reference books and a prodigious memory that's good at making the connections that others miss. (Strangely, this did very little to help me in my school days, but it won me a few awards as a journalist and makes my life easier as an author.)

On Writing...

Writing is work. It's a job. Treat it with the respect that you would any job that you love: Show up for work every day. Put in your time. Do the work. Shake the hands and meet the people and hang out at the watercooler once in awhile, but most of all, you have to write to be a writer. "Writers write" is the dumbest thing in the world, not because it isn't true but because it really should go without saying.

The central thesis of this blog (if it has one) that there's no magical path between 'I want to write' and 'I have written' except to sit down and start putting words on a page. If a writer's to-do list, blog, or writing guide cannot be summed up as "Butt in chair, fingers on keys" then ditch it; it's not worth reading.

And on that lovely note... good night, Internet. And well met.

- Scott

More random thoughts on writer's block and giant robots...

Did you realize that it's possible to have writer's block in one area of your writing life but not another? I didn't either. In fact, I've (over)confidently stated before that I don't even believe in writer's block. And in terms of this impenetrable wall that makes writers drink, that's still true. But my brain does enjoy a sort of line-item veto sometimes that nullifies specific projects that it feels have gone a bit stale. For instance, until recently I found myself uninterested in blogging and unable to come up with anything I was willing to put on paper relevant to the things I was watching crawl past on my Facebook and Twitter timelines.

Maybe I was a little afraid that I've already said all I have to say about the processes of writing fiction. I'm not generally interested in repeating myself.  Even if I had been interested in posting long reflections on the matters that matter most to me, I've already delved as deeply as I think I should into gender politics and sexism in nerd culture, I've ground my ax on matters of book banning, Amazon's antics, and the slow-motion murder of bookselling.

Those are stories I've told so many times I wonder if anyone cares to hear them one more time. There's a thin line between blogging and boorishness. If I can't find something fresh to say, I tend not to say anything. So I ignored the modern world and worked on teaching myself shoemaking instead.  That was new. That, I had no trouble writing about.

I saw someone at a writer's conference awhile back who was wearing a tee shirt that claimed "Writer's block is when your imaginary friends refuse to talk to you."  That's clever, but it's not how it works for me. For me, the problem isn't my imaginary friends giving me the silent treatment, it's when I've heard all their stories before. It's like being at a dinner party with long-time friends & realizing you've all heard each other's stories already.

With real life friends, this leads to in-jokes and companionable silences. In fiction, it leads to stagnation.  And when what you write is already difficult to sell because it's a bit zany, you're already on your back foot. As hard as zany and original might be to sell, zany and stagnant is something no one wants to read, much less buy.

For my money, writer's block is more like hand-written social awkwardness than it is anything else and there's only one cure for the "All the stories have been told" syndrome: Go out and get some new stories.

Or to put it in Howard Carter terms: When the old robots rust, go out and build some new robots. Bigger ones. Better ones. It's hard to save the world without them.

If I'm telling the truth, one of the things that scared me about Howard Carter Saves the World was how quickly it came out of me. If someone was willing to pay me to do so, I'd happily tell those stories for the rest of my life. It's a type of story that allows me to posit a scenario and then completely let go the reins and give the story its head. In a world that madcap, I can follow the story wherever it leads and not be worried I wouldn't have something to say no matter when it went.

And I'm not saying that in case any of the publishers or agents currently entertaining then notion of picking up that book will be convinced by my sincerity. I just enjoyed the heck out of writing it, as you might recall if you were around when I was posting fresh chapters three times a week.

It's a popular conceit that writing is socially-acceptable schizophrenia (I think that quote belonged to EL Doctorow, but don't hold me to that) which gives rise to my compatriot's tee shirt.  Not that the tee shirt or Doctorow are necessarily wrong. I myself have noted that if your inner voices tell you to do stuff, you're crazy, but if the voices just tell you stories and make you write them down, you're a writer.

The trick isn't getting the voices to talk to you. The trick is getting them to tell you stories that someone else will want to hear, stories that you and everyone around haven't already heard a thousand times before.

But then, that's always been the trick, hasn't it?

~ Scott

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This blog post was, in part, inspired by this TED talk given by Sting...

The Internet Is a Strange & Magical Place

An amusing aspect of having a character in one of your novels named after an historical figure is the number of hits your blog receives from school kids looking for information for a school report.

<Waves hand> This is not the Howard Carter you are looking for. </waves hand>

At least I deal with the mummy thing in the first chapter or two. I'm still having fun imagining the kinds of reports that sort of 'research' might generate. "Howard Carter discovered King Tut's tomb and then went on to defend the earth from an alien invasion, using an army of robots and a recipe for instant pudding."

I'm not a history teacher, but for my money, that should be an A+ paper.

Yes, I've been looking at my blog stats again. Yes, I'm blogging about blogging again.

I apologize. I'll go back to other stuff in the next post, I promise.

I used to ignore blog stats that Google coughed up for me (mostly because they made me sad) but then Blogger incorporated them into the actual site and it became a one-click thing. Which means that I've been forced to acknowledge that I'm no longer talking to myself.

It also provides endless amusements and quite a bit of head-scratching because it lists the search terms that got some of you here. My favorite search terms of this week are: "eschew your words carefully".  Now, that certainly sounds like me, though I don't recall saying it.

It almost lost out to "legal pen feathers law desk" which somehow got three people to my blog this week. How? I HAVE NO IDEA! But it's true.  And I'm happy to see you! Please leave a comment. I'd love to write more about these legal feather desk pens.

The internet is a strange and magical place.

Vlogbrothers and Nerdfighters: A case study in the futility of "Platform Building" advice

This is the topic I don't want to talk about. But it's a writing blog and we had to get to it sooner or later... Platform.

There are a lot of writing books in the world and I've read most of them. One of the reasons I particularly love the older ones is because they spend more time talking about how to write and less time talking about why you need to have a wildly popular blog or other online presence.

For the record: none of the books pictured do this.
That's part of what I like about them.

This advice is all-too-often dispensed with an air of "any idiot could do it".

Aspiring writers are repeatedly told (not advised, told) to create and maintain an online fanbase. Get online. What are you waiting for? Generate some buzz! And hordes of writers run screaming into the cybernetic night, searching for fans.

This is referred to as creating an online "platform".

Platform is one of those things that agents and editors talk about with dreamy voices. Most of the reasons given boil down to this: if you already have an audience, you don't have to waste time creating one after your book comes out.  At its best, it's a ready-made fan base that guarantees your devoted followers will mob bookstores on the day your novel comes out, or even drive it to the top of the bestseller lists before it's even finished.

Let me say that again: Before it's even finished.

Click that link. Go ahead. We'll be here when you get back.

Did you read it? Were you just a little sick with envy? I certainly was.

For people who don't click links: YA author John Green's newest book A Fault In Our Stars wasn't even finished yet when it became a bestseller.

John is a talented, award-winning writer. He received the Printz honors and an Edgar Award for his writing, quite apart from his online fame. (I doubt there are many Nerdfighters, as his online community calls itself, on the awards committee at the MWA.) His plaudits are many and that little bust of Edgar Allen Poe was well-earned.

You might recall that back in September of 2009, I named him "One To Watch" because he has a knack for using the internet to tell stories and create community.  (We'll ignore the fact that he was only one of the three on that list you still hear about.  As prophecies go, one out of three ain't bad.) The YouTube channel he created with his brother Hank (collectively known as the "Vlogbrothers") developed the kind of following that bloggers dream of. Millions of fans (myself included) who call themselves "Nerdfighters" watch the weekly uploads, follow him on Twitter, and buy his books.

Here's the tricky part that those advising that everyone go out and do likewise... in almost every case I can find of this happening, it happened mostly on accident.

Sure, at some point, the Vlogbrothers discovered that their videos had acquired an audience. Since then, they have consistently made an effort to include those fans in what they were doing, to inspire them to raise money for charity, and have otherwise capitalized on their following in a way that managed not to alienate them. They even use their nerdiness to exploit YouTube's own ranking algorithm to push videos that advertise charities into the top rankings by motivating their fanbase to watch and rate these videos over and over again.

It's impressive. And I'd wager that it cannot be reproduced.

"Build a platform!" Is the new battlecry heard at a thousand writing conferences. Every book about writing that's appeared in recent years will tell you that you must create some level of buzz online in order to get noticed by publishers. And after every writer's conference, aspiring writers flood the internet, trying to become the next Vlogbrothers, or Bloggess, Scalzi, or Julie Powell, or whoever the presenter used as an example.

That's a huge wall to plop down in front of an aspiring writer and I think it leads to a lot of discouragement. And I think it's largely needless.

Yes, there are things we can all learn from watching those bloggers I just named find success. But in many of the presentations I've attended and books I've read, there lacked a key piece of advice: They did this by being themselves.


 Back to the Vlogbrothers... John and Hank Green built their fan base the old fashioned way: by being funny and topical, yes, but mostly by being genuine and sincere. Two brothers sending 4-minute videos to each other became a force that helped send John up the bestseller lists and helped his brother Hank hit the Billboard charts. Along the way, they've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity and made the world suck less.  Their stated mission is literally "to decrease worldsuck" and they mean it.

More importantly, there isn't a disingenuous bone in either of their bodies. John didn't sit down with his brother and say "How are we going to use YouTube to make my books bestsellers?"

The siren call of the platform builders is a seductive one. I find myself listening to it from time to time myself when I'm trying to decide what to write or not write about on this blog. When in fact, this blog is not an effort to create an online platform. Not because I don't want to sell out a print run before it's even printed, but because that's not why I'm here. I'm writing here because if I didn't write this stuff here, I'd be writing it someplace else. And because I feel like someone should be able to find out the things I had to learn the hard way.

These really are the pages I need to type before I can sleep. And often, they're the things I need to write before I can write. When my brain coughs up an idea, I have to write it down or it will keep nagging at me like a song stuck in my head until I can't think of anything else.

I am honestly gratified that anyone chooses to read these brainfarts of mine, but it's not part of a master plan to build an army and conquer the publishing industry.

This is a place where I stand to tell the truth where the people I think need to hear it can hear me.

Remember when I said that the real successes, the things that really catch fire, mostly happen on accident? Well, that's not entirely true. You have to put yourself out there, and that means a certain amount of premeditation.

The decision to be yourself in public is a decision, not an accident. Being yourself is scary. I get that. But as someone else once noted, everyone else is taken.

And that's the only genuine "platform" advice anyone needs to hear. Because "Go be like them" is never good advice. You will never get anywhere you want to go by being someone else. I can try to write like Jenny from Bloggess, and I can go recipe-by-recipe through a cookbook like Julie Powell, and I can go on Youtube and talk to my sister... But that's me trying to be them, not me being me. And if there's one thing John & Hank's success really should teach you, is that if you have to be someone else to get there, it's someplace you don't want to go.

He's tinkering with the blog again...

Sorry about the design shifts recently. 

When I set the blog to that rather austere background using a photo of some of the lead type from my collection, I'd intended to leave it like that for the forseeable future.

Then I was informed that I'm a children's author... or at least an all-ages author.

Never fear, the content of the blog won't change, just the layout and presentation.  This has never been a blog for adults only and I'm not an author who writes for only one audience and have no intention of becoming same.

Anyway, what you see as I post this isn't the final form. In the next few days, the blog layout will shift here and there as I rethink my design and layout.

Apologies in advance.

-Scott

Fountain Pens, Paper and Stamps

In honor of Labor Day I'm going to try to entice you to do something laborious, something you've long since given up in favor of something easier, quicker and infinitely less beautiful than what you gave up.

I want you to write a letter.

Oh alright, this has nothing to do with Labor Day other than the fact that I'm spending the day home and it's raining so I can't go out and putter in the garden or have a barbecue or any of the traditional American 3-day-weekend pastimes  Which takes me to the woolly wilds of the worldwide web and an echo of something I wrote back in December.

The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword was a counterattack against the notion that hand writing something is somehow outmoded or a bad idea.  I think otherwise.  I propose the wild and woolly notion that to say that the advance of digital communication is no more an excuse for giving up handwriting than the advent of Adobe Illustrator meant we had to stop teaching artists to use a real paintbrush.

Which brings us to the undeniable brilliance of a blog called the Letter Writers Alliance that reawakened my love of the written word.  The handwritten word.  It's no secret that I'm a big fan of paper and ink and these guys have taken it to a wondrously obsessive level.

So yes, I implore you to write a letter.  You don't even have to lick the stamp anymore (though you might have to lick an envelope).


It's time to write something before we forget how.  Get a ballpoint, a fountain pen, a crayon or a piece of chalk, it's all the same to me.  I just want to illustrate how untrue is the subtitle of the New York Times article that "Handwriting is dying because it’s a slow and inefficient way of getting our thoughts out — a hindrance to thinking, given the alternatives..."

Baloney.

The Wearing of Hats

I wanted to take a moment to point you over to a great local memoirist and blogger, Ev Maroon.  http://transplantportation.com/

And now that I have confessed my admiration for his verbal skills, I shall parry and riposte his latest blog post in which I, gentle reader, was categorized as... (deep breath) a hat guy.  Yes.  I was astonished too.  Well, not really, but let us pretend that it was me in that cafe he was describing and go with it because it's funnier that way.

That's me in the corner with the fedora, or on the sofa by the fireplace in the wool driving cap.  Scribbling madly in a notebook or frowning at the screen of my laptop, hat alternately perched atop my noggin or twirling in my hands as I contemplate the next scene of my novel.

Man do I hate the fact that those blasted Kennedy boys with their oh-so-perfect coifs made it de rigueur for American men to stop wearing hats.  It's not an affectation, damn it!  I want something on my head!  I want to cover my hair rather than spend all my time fussing with it, trying to meet the expectations of a society drunk on the fumes of Bryllcreme and blinded by the Brilliantine!

I don't do it to stand out, not really.  It's just that the time I spend glancing in the mirror before going out to get the fedora tilted just so, or the driving cap at just the right angle is less than the time I would spend trying to get the mop on my head to do anything other than whatever the hell it wants to do that day.  I know the hat makes me look like a dandy, but in sooth, it's the least vain option afforded me by this confounded society of ours.

And there's the safety aspect as well.  Yes, wearing a hat is safer, not only for me, gentle reader, but for you as well.  Some mornings that thickness of felt is all that keeps the mop in check, imprisons it against the day when it seizes control and rampages through the city. 

It's for your protection really.  A public service that I wear this hat in defiance of Kennedy and cafe archetype.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The Annual Report

One year ago today, this was a different place.  At the top of the screen was a sepia-toned picture of my desk.  Yes, there was a typewriter; there's always a typewriter...

From

The first post was a disclaimer that included (among other things) the warning that "Novelty is in the eye of the beholder" followed by a list of safety precautions to take in order to avoid getting novel in your eyes. (because we all know that both novels and novelty can be volatile at times and it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye).

I've talked precious little about my novel aside from a snippet here or passing mention there.  Am I superstitious of talking about a project underway?  Maybe just a teensy bit. (throws coffeegrounds over shoulder and spins widdershins in chair.)   I've expanded things a bit since those early days to include technology which means... e-Books.  It took me all of three posts to mention e-Books for the first time.  Bearing in mind that in the early days since this was just an elaborate bit of technology to aid and abet my tendency to talk to myself, so I wasn't tagging every post, there are probably more.

In fact, my top (non-random) topics were Writing Tips and eBooks on an almost even footing with the tag "Random thoughts on..." (which is essentially meaningless).  Like most writers, the eBook frightens and fascinates me because as Kettering said "Of course I'm interested in the future, it's where I intend to spend the rest of my life."

While I don't pretend to have necessarily posted daily, there have been over 365 posts in the last 365 days, which I'm a bit proud of.  Among these were 43 posts on eBooks, 41 "Random thoughts on...", 40 Writing Tips, 22 Copyright musings, and 12 posts railing against Censorship.  In compiling those numbers I realized that I'm in danger of losing my blogger cred since there were only 4 Rants and but 1 lonely post tagged as "sarcasm".

I'll try to do better next year.

I started this blog because my head tends to fill up with "stuff" that has nothing to do with what I'm trying to write.  This is where I put it because it's nice to be able to keep an eye on those things -- you never know what mischief they'll wreak if you leave them unchaperoned...

In the coming year I want to do more book reviews, focusing as always on the How To Write and related sections of the bookstore.  Most writers generate those books eventually and I think that too little attention is paid to them outside of the circle of aspiring writers.  A reader's guide would have been helpful for me at an early stage.

I'm also going to revive my YouTube account if it's still there and if not, I'll create a new one.  I talk to interesting people all the time and I have a visual arts streak a mile wide and it occurs to me that I should be carrying a camcorder with me on some of these outings.

So... Is there anything you would like to see more of?  Or see less of?  Do you have a special request or idea?  Or do you have an idea for a post and a yen to write it yourself and just need somewhere to post it?

Post a comment here or drop me a line at pages2type@gmail.com and tell me all about it!

Thanks for reading!  Thanks for a great year!

-Scott

Mugshots

About a month ago, I started a ritual of posting a picture every morning of my morning coffee ritual. Similar to the "Project 365" meme, this is very specific. If you want to share a cup of coffee with me on any given morning, join me on Daily Booth and post your photo response. (Free membership required, instructions for posting on the site) I love the idea that the internet can join us all in a global kaffeeklatsch. There are very few problems that cannot be solved over a steaming mug of Joe. If nothing else, these little rituals help get a writer through his day... This morning's Mugshot (And PSA) Writing causes wrinkles. They never tell you that in school, so consider this my PSA. Beware the wrinkles of writers! Had a dear frind of mine who happens to be a photographer tell me once that it was "okay for guys to look craggy" in our publicity photos. Love it. (Good thing too.) In other news, the New York Times validated my lifelong approach to education: NYT - How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health

An Odious Little Book

Last week was Banned Books Week and mine was not the only blog taken over by the topic of banned and challenged books. Christine at Stacked posted a book review of one of the most reviled books in history and mounted a compelling defense of keeping it in print and on the shelves.

Of course, I am talking about Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler.

The intellectual courage it took for her to review such a book is astounding. During banned books week, she took on a book that almost everyone agrees is the vile product of a twisted mind, the elucidation of a twisted ideology that literally broke the world and began the march toward the holocaust. I had to read Mein Kampf in college and the thing that struck me most about it is how boring the whole thing was.

Hardly one of Hitler's firebrand moments.

And that is the dangerous face of evil. Hannah Arendt, reporting for the New Yorker on the Trial of Adolph Eichmann, wrote of the realization that evil wasn't a radical force, or a transcendent philosophy, it was the banal and efficient daily application of a horrible ideology. An evil force of bookkeepers backed up by the might of the Wermacht.

I've already posted my defense of keeping both extremes of the political argument in print and readily-available for readers despite the fact that one side or the other makes my blood boil. For better or worse, his is the map of modern political dialogue (or screaming matches as the case may be) and to make it disappear would be to lie about who we are and how we communicate... and how we don't.

But what of Mein Kampf? Surely if any book deserves the "Banned" stamp, it is this one.

This is where it gets sticky. It's easy to rally around a book we love, but how do we argue for a book that we hate? At what point do we cut it off? I don't know. There are some ideas, some philosophies, some books out there in the world that even I think should be suppressed. But where do we draw that line as a society? As I see it, the biggest problem with banning a book like Mein Kampf is that it doesn't make it go away, it drives it underground. It adds a titillating context to reading it that changes the way your mind accepts or rejects its content.  

This is banned, censored, someone doesn't want me to read this... 

Back in my Borders days, we carried Mein Kampf on the shelf in the German history section. At least once every few months, a German citizen visiting our shores would come into my bookstore and for a copy of the book to take home with them. Because it was banned in Germany--it still is for all I know. They were so intensely curious about it, wanted to see it; most of them bought a copy. Between college students slogging through the thing for a class and the German visitors, it's a wonder we ever had it on the shelf.

As my grandparents’ generation dies and then my parents generation follows them, the realities of the world that went to war pass from living memory to the pages of books. There is an erosion when this happens, sharp edges get knocked off and we forget the details. There will one day be no one left to tell us the story with the horror in their voices of having lived through it; no more war crimes trials and extraditions of aging Nazis; no more unremarkable accountants standing before the assembled masses, horrifying us with the blandness of their evil. And there will be no more neighbors, grandparents, or art teachers, as I had growing up, who will show you the numbers tattooed on their arms and witness to you the reality of the camps with hushed voices and tears.

Without the written record, without the evidence on the shelves of every bookstore, we will slowly lose our horror. The names Elie Weisel and Simon Weisenthal and Anne Frank will become dusty and cobwebbed names on the flaking spines of books in an unregarded section of your local library.

6 million killed in the camps. The numbers are too great to grasp, too evil to contain. How long before the greatest atrocity in human history is regarded as an anomaly even by those that aren't among those who deny that it happened. Already it's viewed by too many as something that could only happen once, Hitler was evil, a malign spirit from a medieval morality play, the devil incarnate, somehow separate from the human race. If he wasn't human we don't have to accept that a human being did such a thing... or could do it again.

I'm not the first to say it and hopefully I won't be the last, but it's already begun, the myth of Hitler has overtaken the historical. Hitler has devolved into a caricature, a name thrown around in arguments to vilify your enemy’s position and with overuse any metaphor weakens.

The greatest lie we tell ourselves is “We will never forget” and the second greatest is “It could never happen again”. Which is why I believe that the speech that needs the most protection is so often the speech that scares us the most.

---

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of suspense woven from the threads of history. His current novel in progress is The Palimpsest.

Contact Me

For the record, I must confess that I sometimes get free coffee. And the occasional odd waffle. Can't say as I've been getting a lot of free books since I left the bookselling biz, but who knows what the future holds? From the Silicon Valley Insider, I received this free warning that bloggers are being targeted by the Feds for taking the internet-equivalent of payola. (They gave it me for free, though... heh)