Tag Archives: author
Drafting Small Town Life
The setting of a new novel I’m drafting is a small town. Small town life–sounds quaint and idyllic doesn’t it? In a larger city, the darkness has more places to hide. The unseemly and profane have a place–usually on the other side of the tracks. That negative space seems somewhat isolated and contained among the […]
Password Paranoia
Are you the Keymaker? I forgot a password this week. I needed to get to work writing on a new project and “advanced technology” got in the way. It wasn’t pretty. I had a Matrix flashback and felt as though I was on a search for the Keymaker to unlock a password for one of […]
Have They Lost Their Minds?
I usually don’t get off on a political rant, and I’m not sure this is really political, or if I’m just sensitive to stupid. No, this has nothing to do with North Korea, missing deleted e-mails, a Russian conspiracy, or where Puxataney Phil spends his time when he’s not forecasting the weather. This episode of […]
Travel Roulette
With a few open days on the calendar before the upcoming book launch, I took my son up on an offer for a quick trip to Las Vegas. You can’t beat the people watching in this town. The spectacle begins when you step off the airplane into 115 degree heat. That ant under the magnifying […]
I’m Watching You
They are everywhere Watching, waiting, anticipating. Spending most of my adult life dealing with the darker edges of society–prison, probation and jails–I’ve seen how low humanity can sink. If there is a weakness, or vulnerability present, I can count on a predator to hide in the shadows, ready to pounce. These soulless opportunists strike when […]
F Street Boarding House Murders
In the late 1980’s, the discovery of a bizarre serial murder caught the Sacramento area by storm. Nine deaths were attributed to the killer. It wasn’t the kind of murder that made people lock their doors at night fearing the return of the Night Stalker, or the East Area Rapist. This one was different and […]
Is Sacramento A Serial Killer Friendly Place?
Location, location, location… I’m often asked why I chose to set my crime fiction in Sacramento, California, instead of one of the more well known west coast crime magnets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Fresno. Michael Connelly and Robert Crais have L.A. locked down with their Harry Bosch and Joe Pike series. But, Sacramento is an […]
Social Media For Old Guys – The Author Page
I’m a relative newcomer to the social media world. In fact, I wouldn’t have “Liked” or “Retweeted” anything if my first publisher hadn’t dragged me there and shoved my nose in this big smelly pile called Facebook. And you had to “Like” people. Fresh out of prison (so to speak – retired, not paroled) liking people […]
Can You Read The Signs?
Where would we be without someone telling us where to go, what to do and how to get there? Thankfully, there are an abundance of signs out there to guide us poor, aimless creatures through life. Without a nudge in the right direction, it seems, we would follow the way of the lemming and fall […]
The Social Media Sweet Spot
How I long for the days when the National Enquirer was the only questionable media out there. Current events and how they turn up on my social media timeline is an interesting lesson in human behavior. We–as a species–are so gullible that we willingly grab onto the first snippet of information that matches our narrative, […]
James L'Etoile 