So okay, I’m off the road a bit. Too much to do at the moment to begin Purgatory Ridge. Among the many things on my plate has been preparation for the Midwest Writers Workshop at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana. It’s a great workshop opportunity for writers in early career wanting to hone their skills … Read more
Back to the journey and to my final blog on Boundary Waters. Tony Hillerman is, of course, one of the major reasons I write what I write. He was one of the first mystery authors I discovered. I confess that before I began to write mysteries, I didn’t really read them. My father was a … Read more
A diversion from the road for a moment. I recently received a note from another writer attending a fiction workshop in California. I was told that in the course of the workshop the instructor handed down a dictum, something we all do when we’re trying to deliver as much information to students as we can … Read more
Boundary Waters was the second book in a two-book contract that included Iron Lake. When Pocket Books (now Atria Books, a division of Simon and Schuster) bought the books, they knew nothing about the second book. I didn’t even have a title for it, only a vague idea. Contractually I was obligated at some point … Read more
Boundary Waters opens with a scene many readers consider horrific. A man—a good man, a strong old Ojibwe—is being tortured for information that, in the end, he refuses to give. Some readers can’t get past that opening. But what I point out to them is that nothing graphically violent happens in the opening scene. In … Read more