Win a Copy of The Summer She Was Under Water from Amazon!

Yes, you are a busy bee. Yes, I know it's after Labor day and you're swamped and you just haven't had a chance to pick up my new novel, The Summer She Was Under Water. I forgive you. I do. I want to make your life easier, it's true. That's why Queens Ferry Press and I in conjunction with Amazon are giving away copies of The Summer She Was Under Water absolutely free! You have a minute to enter, don't you?

You can enter here. Now, back to your busy life.

Today at David Gutowski's awesome site,  Largehearted Boy, I got to share my music playlist for my new novel, The Summer She Was Under Water (Queens Ferry Press) on Book Notes:

"My second novel, The Summer She Was Under Water, is actually two books: one I started years ago and put away because the themes of family dysfunction (specifically, parents and their adult children spending a weekend at their lake cabin to relax but instead creating a powder keg of built-up grievances) seemed so overdone, and the other a magical realistic novella, called Water Moon, I wrote about a man who discovers he is pregnant. Although completely different in tone and subject matter, they seemed to be speaking to each other, and it was only when I wove them together did I discover the terrible secret hidden in an already broken, blue-collar Baltimore family. (I don't recommend you always plan novels this way, but it seems to work for me.)

I don't remember exactly what I was listening to years ago when I wrote The Summer She Was Under Water or Water Moon, and they were separated by years of other projects, but when I was going over the edits of the final book with Erin McKnight at Queens Ferry Press and seeing the novel fresh again, I viewed it like a movie, and since I love music scores, I wondered how someone would score it, scene by scene."

To read more and listen to the playlist, go here.

Writers Digest: Seven Things I've Learned So Far

My second novel, The Summer She Was Under Water, just released this week, and it's been a long road, from the first story to the first draft to the first novel. It's hard to write and even harder to be a writer. But I've learned a lot of things, and I talk about seven of them today at Writers Digest:

Readers love to be surprised and challenged, and it starts with the writer challenging him or herself, going to uncomfortable places

To read more, go here.

Interview at Meet the Writer

My second novel, The Summer She Was Under Water, is publishing August 9th with Queens Ferry Press! In the meantime, I was interviewed by the wonderful Melanie Page of Grab the Lapels about it and some writerly stuff:

I also have discovered that I enjoy writing novels more than short stories. Short stories are like a fling to me — a one-night stand. They feel good, but they are what they are. You’re not going to get married and have kids with them.

To read more, go here. 

The Story Behind the Cover at Queens Ferry Press Blog

Today at the Queens Ferry Press blog, I talk about the story behind the cover of my forthcoming novel, THE SUMMER SHE WAS UNDER WATER:

I knew, as soon as Queens Ferry Press acquired my second novel,The Summer She Was Under Water, that I wanted a say in the cover art. I know to what kinds of covers I am drawn and (I hoped) my potential readers. There are covers that blew me away when I first saw them...

To read more, go here.

Excerpt in Amarillo Bay

Thrilled to have an excerpt of my forthcoming novel THE SUMMER SHE WAS UNDER WATER in Amarillo Bay as the story "Hammer Nails."

She was just a girl, Sam first thought, if she thought of her at all. The girl who worked the late shift at the coffee shop on 31st and Charles Street, where Sam got her muffin and tea, had made no other impression on Sam at first other than the fact that she belonged to the legions of urban service-industry workers that filled the coffee shops of the city, seemingly cast from the same disaffected die: slightly unkempt shoulder-length blonde hair, tattoos, a blank expression, rings and jewelry of all vintages on all digits and appendages, an affinity for black and brown and gray fabrics.

Although it wasn’t rocket science, the girl quickly remembered Sam’s order, a large Chai tea with milk and a cranberry oat bran muffin, and would have it ready the nights she usually stopped by.

To read more, go here.

Forthcoming Novel with Queens Ferry Press

Excited that my novel The Summer She Was Under Water has been acquired by Texas publisher and independent juggernaut Queens Ferry Press. The release date is August 2016. Many thanks to Erin McKnight and the folks at QFP for including me in its terrific roster.


Founded in 2011 as an independent publisher, Queen's Ferry Press specializes in literary fiction. The press currently releases 6–12 titles a year, many from debut authors, and is the publisher of Shadows of Men, the 2013 recipient of the TIL Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction.