He's My Client, And He's Counting On

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.

I Grew Up In A Very Small, Close-knit, Southern Baptist Family, Where Everything Was Off-limits. So I Couldn't Wait To Get To College And Have Some Fun. And I Did For The First Two Years. And I Regret A Lot Of It, Because My Grades Were In Terrible Shape.

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

My Name Became A Brand And I'd Love To Say It Was The Plan From The Start. But The Only Plan Was To Keep Writing Books. And I've Stuck To That Ever Since.