Blog

I was recently asked to write a blog about my books and food. My first thought was that I wouldn’t ...
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How is your grandmother’s roast like a period inside a quote mark? Somewhere along my path as a kid I ...
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A Drug Affair, the seventh Spencer Manning mystery, is done and will be out mid February. It was a challenge, ...
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In my last blog I followed the mystery novel from its inception up to the late 1800s. Sherlock Holmes and ...
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Many have asked me what it takes to be a writer. My answer is… be a reader. Read voraciously, especially ...
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The seventh book in the Spencer Manning mystery series is about one-third done. This book is about drugs, a problem ...
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Disclaimer: this blog has nothing to do with Spencer Manning Mysteries… except that it also uses the art of placing ...
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I recently tossed a book into the recycle bin. I have thrown a few into the garbage (the ultimate protest) ...
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Something you enjoy doing should be relaxing and a stress reliever. Right? You would think so… so would I. But ...
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I conducted the following interview with my detective, Spencer Manning, based on questions posed by readers. Some questions led to ...
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In my last blog I talked about bad reviews. Every author gets bad reviews. You can’t please everybody, and everybody ...
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Writing a book is a challenging undertaking. Even more so  is the marketing. Fifty thousand new books are published on ...
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In a prior blog I mentioned that good writers need to read books in their genre to get a feel ...
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There have been many articles written about how to be a successful writer. Of the ones I have read, all ...
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As I write and edit, I constantly find myself scratching my head about American English and wondering how anyone manages ...
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My last blog left Thomas Midgley having solved the engine knock problem by adding leaded gas to the world’s troubles ...
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Thomas Midgley was a chemist and inventor who held over one hundred patents. What he is best known for—and no ...
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I have been lucky to have an idea for the next Spencer mystery before I finish the current book… until ...
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In the fifth book of the Spencer Manning series (the working title is A Frame for Joey), Carol’s son, Billy, ...
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I recently played a concert with the Elgin Community College jazz band (trumpet). One of the tunes was Miles Davis’ ...
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Spencer Manning is a private investigator. He solves mysteries. So far he’s solved them all. But then I have some ...
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In the 1940s there was a series of movie comedy shorts by Joe McDoakes with the titles “So You Want ...
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A recent request from my publisher prompted me to write a short story version of the Spencer Manning mysteries. An ...
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In Missing Boy. Spencer talks about the first McDonald’s, in Des Plaines, IL. He relates an incident that happened to him ...
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When I start a new book one of the first chores is to identify characters and assign names. You’d think ...
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As a kid, I spent many wonderful summer days at Riverview Amusement Park, the largest in the country. When I ...
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Set amongst the Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon in 2006, the plot of the Syrian mirrors the deceit, tension, and intrigue ...
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How would you feel if you were sentenced to five years in federal prison for a few ounces of marijuana? ...
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In my third book in the Spencer Manning mystery series, Harbor Nights, I introduced a secondary character by the name ...
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I write mysteries. But, in a way, so does every other writer. Every good story, in every genre, contains some ...
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She walked into my office wearing a red dress and a look of confusion, sat down, and asked, “Are you ...
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Before I could read, my dad read mysteries to me. His favorite authors were Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. So ...
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