I've been working hard for a while now, mostly editing with a few articles written for American Thinker, and hard work isn't always a lot of fun. When I'm not writing, I'm usually reading something, and even my "pleasure" reading has a purpose...for example, as I continue finishing what has turned out to be an almost complete rewrite of my first novel, Coastal Empire, and my editing and "other" work on the Rootstock epic fantasy series written by L. H. Leonard. Legend of the Storm Hawks and Path of the Spirit Runner are already available in ebook or print (audio still to come), and the final two novels in the collection are scheduled to be published before the end of summer. John Sandford Like I just said, when I'm not writing, editing, entertaining animals or trying to clean house, I'm usually reading something, and it was probably written by John Sandford, my favorite author of mystery and suspense novels. Quite frankly, John Sandford is my role model. Before I die, I can only hope that one of my novels will be half as good as his average effort in the "Prey" series featuring Detective Lucas Davenport, or his other series of novels featuring BCA Investigator Virgil Flowers. Sandford's plots are typically brilliant, and his dialog both razor sharp and realistic. His timing is impeccable, whether comic and dramatic. John Sandford is so good that it was more than ten years and maybe twenty novels before I ever found what I clearly knew was a mistake in one of his novels. And if the reader wasn't a John Sandford fanatic like me, the mistake wouldn't have even been … [Read more...]