So, those of you who follow my sporadic blog may know that for the past few years I’ve been working on a novel. Every chance I can get, I’ve been sitting in my office, typing away, trying to spin a paranormal thriller. I really thought that would be my first book.

But fate had other plans for me. Last week, I was hit by what felt like a thunderbolt of inspiration. I was sick, my three-year-old was sick, and we were hanging out. I decided to try and write a “story” with my little one. Starting with ABCs was sort of a natural. The next thing I knew, I was writing an A to Z for Halloween in verse. The next day, I started illustrating it. A week later, my first book, “All Hallow’s ABC” is available for sale at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and (so...

Ok, I’ve decided to go obvious. Yesterday I wrote about the wonderfulness that is my friend Mary Castillo and offered to give away 10 e-book copies of her latest novel Lost in the Light. But clearly, in the parlance of journalism, I must have buried the lede because I still have SIX — yes, 1-2-3-4-5-6 — copies of the e-book that need to find their readers.

Are you one of those readers? If you are, send me an email through my contact form with the words “I want to get Lost in the Light!” and give one of these hauntingly good e-books a home on your device.

Here’s a little more about the novel:

No one remembers…

One October morning in 1932, Vicente Sorolla entered the white house on the hill and was never seen aga...

I first met Mary Castillo in Mrs. Hunt’s drama class, my senior year of high school. We shared the same space, but we lived in different worlds for most of that year. She was the beautiful, talented, film-loving director who I was sure would take the world by storm some day. I was the shy, unsure of herself, finding-her-own-way creative, not exactly tremendously great at anything except asking questions.

Then, that spring, Mary asked me to star in a short film she wrote about a killer ghost. Between sharing our love of old movies and lying on her kitchen floor in a puddle of chocolate syrup (it looks like blood on video — really!), we bonded. It’s been more than 20 years and not a week goes by that we don’t say hello to one another.

I am so proud of...

The Universe has forced my hand. Instead of publishing Walking in the Dark in October — a date already pushed off from the original September — I will now be epubbing it in late 2012. In other words, most likely December.

It’s not that the book isn’t going well, or that it won’t be finished (hopefully) late this summer, it’s just that things keep happening that force my schedule, with its padded time for editing and formatting, to get tighter and tighter. The most recent thing is being laid up this week with what’s probably a grade 3 sprain of the ankle. I see the orthopedist on Monday, but meanwhile there’s pain and drugs. No fun at all. There are some family things too that I don’t feel like discussing here. Suffice i...

When Pixar announced that its next movie would have a female protagonist, I was thrilled. After all, this is the brilliant group that brought us Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Cars and Finding Nemo. Their track record for amazing, caring, wonderfully told stories was as close to pristine (give or take A Bug’s Life) as one could get in Hollywood. Their main characters have soul and verve; they made me — a bona fide adult — cry and laugh every time.

Then I saw the first trailer for Brave and my heart sank like a stone in a deep, deep Scottish river. There, on the screen, was a red-haired girl rebelling against her mother’s notions of decorum in order to do what she wants to do, which seems to be act like her father. Among ...