How much trouble can an American schoolteacher get into while on sabbatical in the Lake District of England? When the schoolteacher in question is Grace Hollister, and when ex-jewel thief Peter Fox is involved, the result may be disaster.

Verse of the Vampyre opens with Grace Hollister hiding in a graveyard, late at night, waiting for—well, spying on—Peter Fox, who’s to meet with a mysterious woman. (more…)

It’s a writing day for me. The coffee is brewing, and my mind is busy working out scenes, turning over words, trying out new ideas and word combinations. I think about why I write. Why is it I feel so driven to share my words?

Words are a human phenomenon. They’ve exploded with our population into every part of this planet, even into space. Each of us has so many words they spill over into others’ lives, more today than ever. We may not write letters the way people used to, but we remain an utterly wordy species. Email, blogs, cell phones, text messaging, personal websites, 40,000 people a year participating in National Novel Writing Month. Books, films, songs, news, television, junk mail—all of these incorporate the written or spoken word.

This reminds me of the singing of birds. One bird sings a sweet song, but a hundred birds singing in one tree sound like pure insanity. It can be overwhelming. We live in an age of information overload, and much of it comes to us in the form of words. Why are we so driven to keep adding more? (more…)