Every Morning I Wake At 6am Or

You Burn A Man's Pickup, And He's Ready For War.

I Did Get Tired Of Hearing That Criticism Years Ago. That Is Not A Compliment. Being Labeled A "beach Read" Is A Put-down. So, I Did Deliberately Set Out To Write A Book, Camino Island, That Would Be Very Entertaining And Compulsively Readable And We Published It On June 6 In Time For Summer Vacation, Hoping That People Would Buy It And Take It To The Beach.

I Don't Start A Novel Until I Have Lived With The Story For Awhile To The Point Of Actually Writing An Outline And After A Number Of Books I've Learned That The More Time I Spend On The Outline The Easier The Book Is To Write. And If I Cheat On The Outline I Get In Trouble With The Book.

I Learned That Lesson A Long Time Ago. When You Write Popular Fiction, You're Going To Get Bashed By Critics.

The Two Mistakes That Come To Mind Are People Who Introduce A Flood Of Characters In The First Few Pages. Where The Reader Has To Stop And Get Out A Flow Chart And Has To Figure Out Who Is Who. And You Just Can't Do That - Introduce The First Four Generations Of A Character's Family In The First Chapter. You Can Introduce Four Or Five Characters At The Most In The First Chapter. Another Mistake Is To Use Big Words That Are Not Normally Used In Conversation To Try To Impress Folks With Your Vocabulary.