Whenever it’s time to start talking about the art of revision with my college writing students, I usually begin by saying if they want to revise effectively they first need to put some distance between themselves and what they’ve drafted. Being too close to one’s material often causes a writer to see it for what…
Read more
I’ve been a bit quiet for the last couple of weeks: Christmas stuff, a shift in my schedule, and trying to finish the first draft of my follow-up to Dead Man’s Hand are all taking time away from blogging (and other things I should be doing). I ran into a little problem about halfway through…
Read more
I first came across a reference to Don Ryan when I was reading Kevin Starr’s Americans and the California Dream series, a remarkable history of California. Starr identified Don Ryan’s Angel’s Flight as one of the first novels about Los Angeles and Hollywood, and since that was the focus of my dissertation, I sought out…
Read more
