There are several scenes in Leaving Ordinary, which are set in St. Paul, Minnesota. One of my St. Paul research topics was boardinghouses in the 1920s. …
During the rounds of Leaving Ordinary edits, I dropped into a mental hole of ugly and semi-brutal, weeks of self-doubt. I asked myself, Was my novel any good? …
I began writing fiction in the Fall of 2014. In February 2015, I took an opportunity to go to a four-day Haven Writing Retreat in Whitefish, Montana. The retreat sounded fun …
On the television program MN Original,I watched Minneapolis-based painter Eddie Hamilton use his white paint covered hand to spread the color over a finished painting. I gaped. I may have gasped aloud. I was dumbfounded. Why would an artist injure his creation?
After I decided I was going to learn how to write novels, I invested in daily practice. I wasn’t writing full time and instead in the hours that weren’t already claimed by a full-time job …
The Hot Air Affair balloon festival in Hudson, Wisconsin occurs shortly after the new year. The finale weekend starts with a Friday night parade called the Torchlight …
Writers spend hours alone in their worlds of words. I think writers, and other creatives, often go to coffee shops to work because they want to continue working in their bubbles—connected and distant to people at the same time.
