Blog

I was recently asked to write a blog about my books and food. My first thought was that I wouldn’t ...

How is your grandmother’s roast like a period inside a quote mark? Somewhere along my path as a kid I ...

A Drug Affair, the seventh Spencer Manning mystery, is done and will be out mid February. It was a challenge, ...

In my last blog I followed the mystery novel from its inception up to the late 1800s. Sherlock Holmes and ...

Many have asked me what it takes to be a writer. My answer is… be a reader. Read voraciously, especially ...

The seventh book in the Spencer Manning mystery series is about one-third done. This book is about drugs, a problem ...

Disclaimer: this blog has nothing to do with Spencer Manning Mysteries… except that it also uses the art of placing ...

I recently tossed a book into the recycle bin. I have thrown a few into the garbage (the ultimate protest) ...

Something you enjoy doing should be relaxing and a stress reliever. Right? You would think so… so would I. But ...

I conducted the following interview with my detective, Spencer Manning, based on questions posed by readers. Some questions led to ...

In my last blog I talked about bad reviews. Every author gets bad reviews. You can’t please everybody, and everybody ...

Writing a book is a challenging undertaking. Even more so  is the marketing. Fifty thousand new books are published on ...

In a prior blog I mentioned that good writers need to read books in their genre to get a feel ...

There have been many articles written about how to be a successful writer. Of the ones I have read, all ...

As I write and edit, I constantly find myself scratching my head about American English and wondering how anyone manages ...

My last blog left Thomas Midgley having solved the engine knock problem by adding leaded gas to the world’s troubles ...

Thomas Midgley was a chemist and inventor who held over one hundred patents. What he is best known for—and no ...

I have been lucky to have an idea for the next Spencer mystery before I finish the current book… until ...

In the fifth book of the Spencer Manning series (the working title is A Frame for Joey), Carol’s son, Billy, ...

I recently played a concert with the Elgin Community College jazz band (trumpet). One of the tunes was Miles Davis’ ...

Spencer Manning is a private investigator. He solves mysteries. So far he’s solved them all. But then I have some ...

In the 1940s there was a series of movie comedy shorts by Joe McDoakes with the titles “So You Want ...

A recent request from my publisher prompted me to write a short story version of the Spencer Manning mysteries. An ...

In Missing Boy. Spencer talks about the first McDonald’s, in Des Plaines, IL. He relates an incident that happened to him ...

When I start a new book one of the first chores is to identify characters and assign names. You’d think ...

As a kid, I spent many wonderful summer days at Riverview Amusement Park, the largest in the country. When I ...

Set amongst the Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon in 2006, the plot of the Syrian mirrors the deceit, tension, and intrigue ...

How would you feel if you were sentenced to five years in federal prison for a few ounces of marijuana? ...

In my third book in the Spencer Manning mystery series, Harbor Nights, I introduced a secondary character by the name ...

I write mysteries. But, in a way, so does every other writer. Every good story, in every genre, contains some ...

She walked into my office wearing a red dress and a look of confusion, sat down, and asked, “Are you ...

Before I could read, my dad read mysteries to me. His favorite authors were Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. So ...