Latest Posts

My First World Cup

My brother Goose and I went to France together on a Dartmouth study abroad program. As anyone who knows us would attest, this had to be a mistake on Dartmouth’s part. We each stayed with families in what, at the time, was a blue-collar town in central France called Bourges (it is now a spectacularly restored medieval city and very much a prime tourist destination). If you look at a map of France and point to its exact center, your finger will be on the dot labeled “Bourges.”

While there are many stories about our journey there, this story is about a soccer match between the Americans studying abroad and the Bourges soccer team, L’équipe Bourges.

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A Good Summer

Jeff Lustig was six feet tall in sixth grade. He towered over the rest of us – all 110 pounds of him. He had long arms and long legs. None of us, however, thought too much about this height disparity as we were all going through changes at the time – especially the girls – and, they were far more interesting.

The only time it became an issue was during gym class. Each day, we’d be sent out to run around Todd field – where the high school varsity played football on Saturdays – and Jeff would race ahead, stretching his long legs in wide leaps that took him flying around the field. He always came in first, by a lot…maybe forty or fifty yards a lot.

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New Blog Tour

Sorry to have been so absent of late, my website has been under construction of late and my access to the blog has been limited.

For those of you who like to follow along, I’m doing another blog tour. You can find interviews, reviews and features on Anvil of God according to the following schedule. Continue reading →

I Blame it on Pags

I blame my buddy Steve Pagnotta. In high school he suggested that I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (in that order, of course). His sales pitch fell apart when I asked him what they were about. He said, “dwarves, wizards and dragons.” I immediately stopped listening. Although I had been a comic book fiend in my youth (DareDevil, Spiderman, Batman), the idea of reading about faerie people just didn’t seem my style. Fortunately, Pags persisted and I promised to give Tolkien’s books a try.

I devoured them over the course of a week. They were so wonderfully different and amazingly complex. The plots followed a familiar “imperiled hero on a quest” format; the action was intense, the writing engaging and the characters were filled with a mixture of comic relief and pathos. What captured my attention, however, were the backstories of the elves and dwarves and wizards and hobbits who all had their own well-formed histories, legends and languages. I felt like I was missing the best part of the story. Continue reading →

Gold Medal

Sorry for the delay in posting. I’ve been trying to finish my first draft of “Sin of Omission” and I get tunnel vision when I write.

Some excellent news! Anvil of God won a GOLD MEDAL (yes!) for Best Historical Fiction Novel of 2014 by the Independent Publisher Book Awards (also known as The IPPYs). The honor is shared with author Scott E. Blumenthal for his book “The Kiss; A Novel” as the two novels tied for the top spot.The awards will be presented at a ceremony in New York City May 28th on the eve of BookExpo America.

Conducted annually, the Independent Publisher Book Awards honor the year’s best independently published titles from around the world. The IPPYs were conceived as a broad-based, unaffiliated awards program open to all members of the independent publishing industry, including: independently owned and operated publishers, foundation or university presses and long-time independents that became incorporated but operate autonomously and publish fewer than 50titles a year.

This is the second award recognition for Anvil of God. In March, Anvil was named a finalist in the historical fiction category of Foreword Review’s “Book of the Year Award” competition. (Winners will be announced in the middle of this month).

Here’s the link:http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1791

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