My first published novel, Lisa33 was an avante-garde sex comedy set on the internet. I had a well-known agent, a prestigious publisher, and a sizable advance – everything one dreams of. And yet the end result was quite disastrous. My book got caught up in politics with the publisher, my agent mysteriously disappeared as the…
The idea for Hidden Shadows began when I discovered an isolated, rugged section of the Texas Hill Country called Willow City. I loved the craggy, impossible hills, the deep canyons, the low-lying meadows. It felt as though I had been tossed back in time. Not a house was in sight, not a single barn. Homes…
Some years ago I started working on a memoir. I was in a writing group with two other women at the time, and the plan was that we would each get something done on our respective projects and take turns reading a portion of our new work at our weekly meetings. My memoir was slow…
The lady from the old neighborhood who read my book leans forward, her hair pepper gray and black. Her eyes really only half open the entire time. Her one hand holds a stack of envelopes and the other a blue and leather handbag as large as you think of the state of Colorado as large.…
The Story Behind David S. Grant’s BLOOD: The New Red The story of BLOOD: The New Red really starts with one of my first books titled Corporate Porn that featured a model, named Mickey, turning to the adult movie industry for work. After other writing projects I started thinking about Mickey and what if he…
There are a great many enduring images of Ireland; breath-taking scenery freshly misted by gentle rains, lichen-stained Celtic Crosses in the ruins of medieval monasteries, fading Georgian splendor from the days when Dublin was a jewel of the Empire and a green and lush country of pious and happy folks just waiting to be friendly.…
It is almost impossible to define exactly where the “inspiration” for a novel begins. I am almost always character driven rather than plot driven, so my inspiration invariably comes from a slow sort of courtship that I begin with a character I want to know better. Tessa, the protagonist in The Manicurist, evolved very slowly.…
Thirty years ago, I wrote Sentiments of Blue while attending Western Michigan University. Back in those ancient times, a writer couldn’t store a story on a computer file. I left the manuscript somewhere in the basement of my first house, and over time, it seemed to vanish. The story received decent reviews from my classmates,…
The story behind the story? To be honest, there are several. Over the past several generations we’ve boxed the early nineteenth century into two categories. On the one hand, we’ve got the military swashbucklers—the Richard Sharpes, the Horatio Hornblowers and the Captain Jack Aubreys. And on the other, we’ve got the domestic version, which grew…
Just the other day, while I was at a soccer tournament, an old friend of mine who played college baseball with me, came over while I was watching a game. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “I read ‘White Chocolate’ the other day.” He was laughing and he had his hand on my shoulder.…
The Story Behind the Book 