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Romantic comedy (rom-com) tropes are recurring plot devices or themes that drive the plot and the romantic relationship between the main characters. These tropes characterize the genre; rom-com fans expect them and love them. But success breeds opportunity, and it may be time to tweak the formulae. Some popular tropes include Enemies to Lovers (for […]

Hilary Mantel, in her own words, likes to “use real people in real situations.” Her Man Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies evoke Tudor England so vividly that most readers accept her portrait of Thomas Cromwell as historically accurate. According to one critic, because of her books “millions think of Thomas Cromwell as a much-maligned,

A few nights ago, my wife and I were hosting a thank-you dinner for two beta readers of my new novel, Once We Were Strangers. Conversation drifted to my plans for my next project, and I was urged, as I often am, to write a memoir capturing some of the stories from my career-hopping past.

Vladimir Lenin once said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” My life of late falls into the second bin. I’m sitting now in my new office, trying to catch up. Since my last post, my wife and I have sold our house of twenty years on New Castle

Good science fiction needs good science as well as good fiction. In my first novel, When Comes Such Another, the reality distortion comes from the presence of Whu, a creature from a parallel universe. Within close proximity of him, the normal gravitational rules of our world don’t apply. Stuff tilts, like the house in the

The writing of my first novel actually began twenty-five years before I even thought of doing it. I was carrying my lunch tray, walking out of the cafeteria in the Student Union at the University of Wisconsin, onto the plaza overlooking the lake. Somewhere among that throng of students and faculty was a table full