One of my favorite lines of poetry comes from Charles Bukowski, the great California poet, novelist, and postal worker: “And the days run away like wild horses over the hills…” I watch them go now, the days, in exactly the way Bukowski said, and every year they seem to vanish faster than before. What they … Read more
It’s over, the long standoff. Simon and Schuster, Barnes and Noble, they’ve shaken hands and gone back to work, one publishing books and the other selling them. It’s been a battle hard on a lot of us in the trenches, those of us whose livelihoods depend on the visibility a chain like Barnes and Noble … Read more
Tamarack County, the next in my Cork O’Connor series, goes on sale this Tuesday. My last four novels have been New York Times bestsellers. Tamarack County may not join the others on this list. That’s not because it isn’t good—it received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist—but rather because it won’t be on that … Read more
I just learned that I can’t visit any Barnes and Noble store with the release of my upcoming novel Tamarack County, the thirteenth in the Cork O’Connor series. There’s a spat going on between my publisher, Simon and Schuster, and the bookstore chain. No Simon and Schuster author may visit any Barnes and Noble until … Read more
I grew up in the 50s and 60s, and my favorite movies all had monsters in them. The best of those wonderfully terrifying creatures were the brainchildren of a man named Ray Harryhausen. He was the genius behind the Cyclops in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. He created an army of sword-wielding skeletons in Jason … Read more