Why It Was Difficult to Interview Fellow Author (And Friend) R.G.Belsky

I didn’t think it would be difficult to interview R.G. Belsky. He’s the author of the Clare Carlson mystery series. Book #5 in the series, It’s News To Me was published a month ago. I raced through it the same way I did the others in the series. Naturally, I was delighted when The Big Thrill , the online magazine of the International Thriller Writers association, asked me to interview him for the November 2022 issue. Continue reading “Why It Was Difficult to Interview Fellow Author (And Friend) R.G.Belsky”

When Your Swashbuckling Hero Fails You: And, I Don’t Mean in Fiction

Like countless kids in the 1970s, Margaret Sullivan decided to become a reporter because of the breathtaking — and breathless– coverage of the Watergate scandal in the pages of the Washington Post.

She was barely a teenager, when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein chronicled the corruption in the Nixon administration and its cover-up. So, it wasn’t till the 1976 movie, All The President’s Men, that, she says, “journalism began to look downright fascinating.” And, “glamorous,” she adds in her new book, Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from An Ink-Stained Life. Continue reading “When Your Swashbuckling Hero Fails You: And, I Don’t Mean in Fiction”

Fall On The North Fork : #Love Where I Write

My hometown newspaper, the Southampton Press, said this in its review of my latest thriller, Fool Her Once: “…What also recommends it is its setting, the North Fork… It’s obvious the author knows the area well, and loves it.” Continue reading “Fall On The North Fork : #Love Where I Write”

A Monster, A Horse & My Mother’s 100th Birthday

That was my week, last week.  I read Geraldine Brooks’s outstanding novel, Horse; I binge-watched the nauseating docudrama Dahmer- Monster: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer , and on September 26, I reflected that my mother would have been 100 years old had she lived.

Oh, and yes, the first feature I’ve written for The Big Thrill magazine appeared on the cover of its October issue. Continue reading “A Monster, A Horse & My Mother’s 100th Birthday”

My Queen Is Dead: Elizabeth II 1926-2022

At the very moment the Queen of England was drawing her last breaths, I was on the phone with a former editor, one of my dearest British friends in London. We were talking about Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister.

“But are you keeping up with the bigger story here?” he asked me. We are news junkies, he and I, but for the moment I was flummoxed. “What story?”

“The Queen,” he said. “All the children, Charles and Andrew and Anne and William and even Harry are gathering at her bedside in Balmoral.” Continue reading “My Queen Is Dead: Elizabeth II 1926-2022”