DURING THE LAST WEEK in February 2013, I flew to Santiago, Chile for a week-long business trip. I’ve never been to South America before, and really didn’t know what to expect. People (and the Internet) insisted that folks in Santiago would have a good smattering of English, since it’s a…
I’VE BEEN WORKING at the same dayjob for almost 20 years, so at this point, I’ve stacked up a pretty good bit of annual vacation time. This year, for the first time ever, I decided to take two straight weeks off and do a driving vacation with the family. We…
YESTERDAY, I WAS IN TORONTO, on a short 3-day trip for the day job… the upside was, I got to have dinner at Colum “Paperback Horror” McKnight’s house, and he introduced me to a couple of fellow horror authors — Jason Darrick and Tobin Elliott. And I had a chance…
NINE MONTHS AGO at my dayjob, the idea came up that I should attend a convention in Munich, Germany this spring. At first I didn’t take it too seriously. I travel domestically a lot for the dayjob, but there was talk of going to China last year too, but that…
THE WEEK AFTER CHRISTMAS is always a week of cleanup for me. Putting away the remnants of one year to prepare for another. I spend hours organizing and backing up computer files, updating my iPod, cleaning off my desk from weeks of detritus… and I also think back a lot…
I HAVE TO SAY, this has been a pretty good week! On Monday night (actually, 1 a.m. Tuesday morning) I finished my final edits on my 6th novel, NightWhere! So finally, after a couple weeks of editing and rewriting (and a series of very late nights there at the end!),…
I LOVE ROADTRIPS. For a couple years, I did a lot of them, since when my first few novels were released, I drove to Cincinnati, Nashville, St. Louis, Indianapolis and even Atlanta to do bookstore signings. Over the past year, with changes in the book industry and the collapse of…
SO. TWO AND A HALF years ago, I stopped in Nashville for a night while driving — on my way to my first Dragon*Con in Atlanta. It was the week Covenant, my first novel was released in mass market paperback, and so, I ended up doing the very first booksigning…
I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS about this city, but something here calls to me. I’ve spent more time here than almost anywhere besides my home in Chicago, some by choice, some for work. I’ve set two novels just north of here, and a short story that I wrote about…
LAST WEEKEND, I FLEW out to San Francisco for four days to run a seminar for my dayjob. The last day of the trip happened to coincide with my birthday, so I took the  opportunity to stay over in the city a few hours on Sunday and walk around a…
