I have been asked to write to you about my new novel, The Lapone Sisters. I think it will be fun to let you in on all the why’s, how’s, and what’s of the story, and the reasons that led to my final decision to put pen to paper . . . or to be…
I hope children enjoy his story and that it helps them develop compassion for strays. Who knew a one-eyed cat could inspire so much love while starring in a new picture book? This month the third book in the Stray Cat Stories children’s book series, Frazier: The Very Special Cat, launches with Writer’s Coffee Bar…
We draw many of our characters from real life. Most are composites of people we’ve known. When Larry and I started writing together, we hadn’t even considered writing mysteries—until we visited my psychoanalyst father, Dr. Saul K. Pollack, in Milwaukee. That visit set us on a happy new course. My father, a widower in his…
Originally posted on The Dark Phantom Review:
Mystery Author Randy Overbeck on the Inspiration behind his Books “Overbeck’s pace is spot on and makes for a thoroughly engaging and quick read…a clear look at the way racism and bigotry continued to leak far beyond the bounds of the deep South even after desegregation began to…
Someone, I can’t remember who, wrote “Yesterday is history; tomorrow is mystery.” I get the point but respectfully disagree. History is often a mystery as well. The past is littered with secrets. Delving into my own heritage, for example, I learned that every ten years when the census-taker came round, my Scottish grandmother shaved a…
When you live in a small town, you sometimes think you know everything that happens. There are no secrets. Everyone knows your business. And in some cases, this is true. Small towns are usually close knit. People have known each other for years. Families have been friends (or enemies) for generations. But there are always…
I’d been a career editor, starting at Harper’s Magazine and ending as a writer for a major defense corporation. In 1993 Larry retired early as an engineer so we could spend winters in Honolulu with family. I agreed, but I suddenly realized I was no longer a professional editor/writer—I felt I’d lost my identity. So…
Why does your tummy ache? Why does it make noises? What happens in your stomach after you eat? Why should you eat slowly? In this educational picture book, the author answers these questions and more, describing the “five tummy men” that inhabit our stomachs and their specific jobs: Mr. Boss, the one in charge Mr.…
“You know the hand of serendipity when you see it.“ During a period of time when I had finished one novel but not yet come up with an idea for the next, I found myself in that boring no woman’s land where the creative spirit begins to shrink because it doesn’t have an outlet. I…
Writing a memoir is a bit like taking pictures of my life with the same camera—but with different lenses. And so reconciling these two elements—seeing my life as it was and then viewing it, or aspects of it, from a fresh perspective—is what distinguishes the memoir genre from many others. In my experience with life-writing,…
I got the idea for The Rising Place after reading a daily devotional in The Upper Room magazine one morning about a retired school teacher who had just died, leaving no children. After the service, one of the teacher’s former students, from fifty years back, approached his teacher’s niece and told her what a great…
I have always been fascinated by how relationships work. As a therapist for many years, I listened to many people talk about how their partners failed them, how they failed their partners, or how the threat of losing a partner was accompanied by terror and, if he or she did in fact leave, by stark…
The Writing process: SPIRITS OF THE WESTERN WILD evolved over time as a labor-of-love for myself and my story partner Roger Vizard. Both of us have been working in animation for years, first connecting on the production of “Stuart Little 2” back in 2001. It was during the production of “Surf’s Up” that Roger pitched…
A grizzled old Choctaw man told my friend and me that he believed that Civil War gold was on his farm. He believed that Maximilian, the Emperor of Mexico, sent gold to support the South’s war effort, and that none other than Jesse James, then a member of the Confederate Cavalry, was in charge of…
Sometimes a person knows he wants to be an author but has a hard time deciding what to write. Sometimes it’s just the opposite, and a person who has no intention of becoming an author learns a story he feels compelled to write. In my case I was already an author and then a…
The Story Behind the Book 