How My Day Job Inspired My Writing

I spent over a decade as an antique shop owner, which fed into the writing of The Heart's Bidding, where a stage-shy girl has to become a live auctioneer to save her family antique shop. In this video, my editor Diane Callahan and I talk about all the dirty behind-the-scenes details when it comes to the auction world: how I found myself on that niche career path, a "bidder fever" incident where a family Bible sold for $5,000, and the story of the real-life yellow door that plays a crucial role in the novel.

Writing Romance as a Guy (My First Interview!)

My friend and amazingly talented editor Diane Callahan conducted our inaugural interview over on the Story Garden Publishing YouTube channel! Our first topic was all about why I chose to write romance as a guy with The Heart's Bidding and how intimidating it feels to be in a roomful of women at Romance Writers of America conferences. If you enjoy the video, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts. :)

What can I say about Theatre?

Once theatre gets into your heart, it nestles there the rest of your life.

I don’t just mean going to see it, which of course is grand and epic in itself (and sometime life-altering too) but on the stage and behind it as well.

Spin the hands of the Way-Back-Clock to twenty years ago when I was a lowly freshman in community college and meet the shy boy who was looking for a class that would help keep his grades in the good (or passing, as it were) column. I saw a class offered in the registry entitled Intro to Theatre 101 taught by the incomparable Frank Barnhardt. Theatre, hmmm… I thought, I do like movies, and I really like seeing the rave reviews this teacher is getting on RateMyProfessors.com (well, maybe I was concentrating more on the ratings that said “easy A” and “Show up and pass” in the comment sections). What I wasn’t prepared for was how I would end up falling in love. Not with someone, but with the class.

Frank took us under his wing and peeled back the red fire curtain to show us the magic behind the stage. It was like being in my own DVD movie commentary. Only this was real.

I loved the class, my fellow students, and Frank so much I signed up for each class he taught through the rest of my time at the college. And never regretted a penny of the tuition or a second of the time.

So, it was with those thoughts in mind that I teamed up with Hero Bowen (a UK wordsmith and fellow lover of the theatre) to write Limelight & Larceny. It’s a series of stand-alone heist adventures featuring a lovable, if somewhat hammy, group of community actors.

If you ever stood on or behind the stage in school, or college, or heck, even in the real world where the people paid to see you rumble out the lines of Romeo and Juliet or The Glass Menagerie, then you should pick up Limelight & Larceny: The Crew-Building Con. If it doesn’t bring a fond memory or two flooding back into your heart, well, maybe these thieves stole it along the way.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, they were easy A’s, but maybe that was because I loved learning and earning every one of them.