Old horror writer back from the dead…
Five years writing a grief memoir… That’s how long I spent writing about my life with Ellen, my wife of 47 years who died on Thanksgiving Day 2019. Five years of wrestling with memories, confronting regrets, trying to honor a complicated woman and an even more complicated marriage. Five years of starting over, deleting thousands … Read more
Last week I wrote about why memoir is having a moment in 2025 and why your story matters. Today I want to get practical and tell you how to write a memoir. How do you actually take a lifetime of memories and turn them into a coherent story that readers will want to finish? I … Read more
I’ve been watching something interesting happen in the publishing world regarding memoir writing in 20205, and I’ll be honest: it surprised the tar out of me. Memoirs are everywhere. Not just the celebrity tell-alls you’d expect (though yeah, those too), but regular people writing about their regular lives. And here’s the kicker: readers are eating … Read more
In my first two posts, I talked about what documentary fiction is and how structure shapes meaning. Now let’s get completely practical and discuss writing documentary fictions, the tools that help, and the ethical responsibilities you can’t dodge. Because here’s what I wish someone had told me before I started The Healing Physicians: documentary fiction … Read more
In my last post, we wrote about what documentary fiction is and why it matters. Today I want to get practical about the craft itself—specifically, how you build a documentary fiction structure that makes verifiable facts feel like inevitable story. Because here’s what nobody tells you when you start writing documentary fiction: it’s not just … Read more
You know that moment when you’re reading a history book and you think, “This is fascinating, but I’m falling asleep”? And then you pick up a novel and think, “This is gripping, but is any of it true?” I’ve been wrestling with this problem for months while working on The Healing Physicians—a project that tracked … Read more
In my last post, I gave you the brutal truth about freelance writing in the age of AI. Entry-level opportunities are vanishing, the market’s brutal for generalists, and companies want human quality at AI prices. Now let’s talk about what you can actually do about it. I’m not going to promise this will be easy. … Read more
Remember in my last post when I mentioned that AI is creating entirely new writing roles even as it eliminates others? Let’s dig into that, because it turns out there’s a genuine opportunity here that most writers aren’t aware of yet. You see, I’m talking about becoming an AI content editor or AI proofreader—roles that … Read more
I’ve been watching this unfold from an interesting vantage point—as a 77-year-old author experimenting with AI collaboration while also paying attention to what’s happening to working writers trying to make a living. And I’ve got to tell you, if you’re thinking about becoming a freelance writer in late 2025 to pay the bills, you need … Read more
I’ll confess something that’s been nagging at me lately: I sometimes catch myself thinking I’ve missed the boat. That if I was going to make a real go of resurrecting my writing career–I mean really pursue it, not just dabble–I should have started decades ago when I was younger and hungrier and didn’t need reading … Read more