The Blog Page

I remember the chilly night in San Francisco, with the Bay Bridge off in the distance, when Truman Capote’s classic, In Cold Blood, lured me from a tiresome television program and into my reading chair wrapped in a blanket. I expected a fast-paced, true-crime thriller...

Summer, 1958. I was a thirteen-year-old geek with thick glasses, frizzy hair, a scruffy dog named Laddie, and two girlfriends who lived up the street. Our family lived in Wilmette, a suburb of Chicago. My father was a corporate attorney; my mother was a housewife and...

I can almost remember the scene – clear as Autumn in the Sierras, when in 1967 I purchased a book I'd been anxious to read in an airport bookstore, Truman Capote's, In Cold Blood. I was in the spacious Pacific Heights living room I shared with five fellow...

June 1984. I hadn’t noticed the man in back of me as I stood in line to pay for my breakfast at the Miramar Hotel in Santa Barbara – home of the famed Santa Barbara Writer’s conference. I’d just spoken to the young man who’d waited on our table about the difference...

A few months ago, our writing group leader asked, "How many of you can pinpoint the moment you realized you had to tell your story?" One of the many pivotal moments I had while writing my book wasn't the morning I read a newspaper article about a legendary detective...

Camarillo, California. Summer,1990. John St. John and I had been working on a chapter for way too long. I suggested we have an iced tea break, but first, I had a question. “I looked through some of the photographs you gave me and wondered - what was the deal with the...