Tag: frost

March 19, 2019

Mary Anna

A couple times after releasing Frost someone asked how writers come up with character names in novels. I assume for every author it’s different, but for me, it’s generally one of three things.

Some of them–like Amy Frost and Arnold Dooley–were just there the whole time. The name is one of the first character traits that forms in my head, and the rest of the character forms around it, and it doesn’t change once throughout the process.

Some of them–like Tonya Katz, or Todd from Emails from Heaven–I develop to suit the needs of the character. In my head, I know exactly how someone named Todd would look, sound, and act, and those things are what I was trying to get across with that particular person.

And some of them I simply steal from elsewhere in my life–a song, a TV show, or a real person I know. That was the case with Mary Anna, Amy’s best friend. It came from this song by the Wood Brothers:

It’s got nothing to do with the actual lyrics; i.e the Mary Anna in the book isn’t based on the Mary Anna from this song. I just like the name, and it seemed like a good one for a best friend.

October 16, 2018

Chapter 1

Frost officially releases November 1. The following is an excerpt from the book. If you’ve already pre-ordered, don’t forget to enter the giveaway. 

Chapter 1

Tonya Katz is a Grade A bitch, and I am reminded of this each time I’m in her presence. You can dilute it with more palatable language if you like, but I’ll roll with the truth, thank you very much.

I play with the word on my tongue, rolling it around but not saying it. Bitch, bitch, bitch.

She isn’t mean; meanness would be a welcome moment of humanity for Tonya Katz. She’s exceedingly nice—that’s the deal—and the first few times you meet her, it’s easy to mistake it for real, genuine warmth. It once led me to the edge of liking her. But after that—after things progress past surface talk and simple pleasantries and oh well it sure looks like rain, doesn’t it?—that’s when you realize who Tonya Katz really is. Which is to say, she’s no one; the broad either doesn’t have a real personality, or she’s so ashamed of it, she smothers it with canned lines and pageant smiles until it’s unrecognizable. Why someone would choose to live this way, I don’t know. How exhausting.

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September 28, 2018

Frost Pre-order + Cover Reveal

Hello, dear people of the Lodge. I’m here to tell you I’ve emerged from quasi-exile with something to show. Three years in the making, my new novel is finally done and set for pre-order. Frost will be released November 1, and is live on Amazon now.

As I mentioned to the email list yesterday, I’ve worked a lot on the craft in the last few years, and I think I’ve grown as a writer and storyteller. That should be evident in this one. It’s been a lot of hard work (like mentally-exhausting hard…not cement-pouring–i.e. actually–hard…but anyway) and there were times this book about killed me (metaphorically speaking), but in the end I think I wrote the story I set out to write. That’s all you can hope for as a writer, and I’m pretty damn proud of it.

Here’s the cover and description:

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