This blog post is part of my ongoing series regarding my new novel, What Happened in Granite Creek. This post contains spoilers, so if you haven’t read the book yet, don’t proceed any further. You’ve been warned! 🙂 For the rest of you, let’s get to it: Q: How come you don’t resolve who killed […]
A reader who’s read both Forgotten April and What Happened in Granite Creek noted that the holidays — Thanksgiving in both and Christmas and New Year’s in Forgotten April — play pivotal roles in my plots. She’s absolutely correct, and she got me thinking about it; I’m not sure I made the connection until she […]
NOTE: This post is part of my ongoing series called “What Really Happened While I Was Writing What Happened in Granite Creek.” Occasionally, some of these posts will contain spoilers. I’d rate this one “medium” level, so advance at your own risk. (The perfect solution, of course, would be to read What Happened in Granite […]
Whew! Hard to believe it’s almost been a month since I officially launched What Happened in Granite Creek. It’s been such a fun ride so far! I’ve been getting requests for a reading guide, so here it is. Opening this link will open a PDF on your computer. Warning, though: this guide is meant to […]
So far, almost all of my published stuff is based in New England. My short stories “Orange Pineapple” and “Crush” are set on Cape Cod. Forgotten April is set outside of Boston. And then, there’s What Happened in Granite Creek. Granite Creek is a fictional town in New Hampshire, but some of the places I […]
I put a lot of thought into my characters’ names, as I imagine most writers do. I’m particularly interested in a name’s meaning, both subtle meanings — like a name’s origins — and more obvious meanings. To wit: in one of my short stories, “Orange Pineapple,” one of the main characters has low self-esteem and […]
The best compliment I’ve received about What Happened in Granite Creek is this: “you write as if you were a mother yourself.” I’ve received this compliment from a number of people, and not just with this book, but also Forgotten April and some of my short stories, most notably “Crush” and “A Touch of Charlotte.” […]
What Happened in Granite Creek (WHIGC) plays with time. Part one alternates between “present day” (the fall of 2008) and the past, which starts in March 1995 and goes through November 2007. Part two takes place six years into the future (from the “present day”), so 2014. I was inspired by The Time Traveler’s Wife […]
In What Happened in Granite Creek, one of my characters — Jamie Briggs — is a quadruple amputee who lost his arms and legs while serving in Iraq. The novel is based on the short story “Support Our Troops,” which I wrote without having done much research beyond looking for some images online (so I […]
What Happened in Granite Creek evolved from my short story “Support Our Troops,” which I wrote in November 2007. I always knew the short story wanted to be a novel and even scribbled a climactic scene when I was drafting the short story, holding it in my “Extras” folder, knowing I’d come back to it […]