The above photo was from a couple weeks ago, when Rosie and I went for an afternoon hike at Silver Falls State Park, about thirty minutes from where I live. It was a nice reminder of why the Willamette Valley can be such a lush, green paradise. I sometimes take it for granted. We’ve had some erratic weather lately, but that was a particularly nice Thursday. I got ten pages of writing in the morning and nine miles of hiking in the afternoon, spending a blissful three and half hours east of the waterfalls up in the forest where it’s a lot less crowded. Did I say less crowded? I saw only one person the whole hike.
Of course, afterward my body reminded me that I’m in my fifties now. I don’t recover nearly so fast.
First, some happy news: My short story, “The Seduction of Doctor Dimension,” which appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, is a finalist for the International Thriller Writers Award in the Best Short Story Category. It may be a cliche to say so, but it really is an honor just to be one of the five finalists. The winner will be announced at the 2026 Thriller Awards during the Awards banquet at ThrillerFest in New York City May 2026. Sadly, I won’t be able to attend this year, but in the very unlikely event my story wins, the editor of EQ (the excellent Jackie Sherbow) will be accepting on my behalf. I told her to extoll the virtues of subscribing to great short story magazines like Ellery Queen!
My new novel, One for the Monkey, has been out in both hardcover and ebook for about a month. Thank you for all the kind emails. I especially appreciate those of you who take the time to write a review at Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub, etc. It really does help, even if your review is just a sentence or two. A trade paperback version will be out in a few weeks, for those of you who prefer paper but may have found the jacketed hardcover too expensive. (Personally, I think the hardcover is a gorgeous book.) There are no more autographed copes for sale at this time. While I enjoyed making those available, I only plan to do that a few times a year (usually when I release a book) because of how time consuming it is.
As far as what I’m working on now, fans of my Garrison Gage books will be pleased to hear that I’m well into the tenth book in the series. It’s going to be a while yet, but I’m having a blast revisiting my cranky PI with the bum knee, and I hope that joy carries over into the book itself.
And just because I can, I’ll cap off this post with a few pictures from our 10-day trip to Costa Rica back in February. Neither Heidi or I had ever been to Central America, and my wife, who is quite the bird lover, was also eager to see the wildlife. We spent half it in La Fortuna, at a resort near the Arenal Volcano National Park, then hopped on a 12-seater turboprop Cessna to spend the second half within walking distance of Manuel Antonio National Park. Plus a little bit of lounging on a sunny beach, of course. Man, those little planes never let you forget you’re flying.
Gotta watch out for the little capuchin monkeys, though. At Manuel Antonio, they’ll grab the snacks right out of your backpack.
That’s a photo of Rosie, my intrepid Irish Setter, and my daughter playing on Beverly Beach on the Oregon coast a few months back. You can just barely make them out on the beach if you squint. We spent a lovely few days at Otter Rock, a moody, somewhat isolated headland tucked off Highway 101 that’s great if you want to get away from the crowds but not so great if you want what the crowds are often looking for: restaurants, shops, attractions, and the like. Fortunately, Newport is only a ten-minute drive to the south, which offers all of that and more, so staying at Otter Rock is a little like having the best of both worlds.
A little news: My short story, “Strays,” just appeared in the September/October 2025 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. This one—which involves a husband and wife team sent to track down stray missiles in space from a long-settled galactic war—is one of my favorites. That doesn’t always mean much, I’ve found, because what an author thinks is good and what a reader thinks is good aren’t always the same thing, but it is one of those stories that when I finished it I thought, hmm, there’s something here, something that resonates, something that sticks with you. If you want to take out a subscription, you can do so here; if you want to buy this particular issue electronically, you can do it here. I believe Kindle Unlimited readers can also read it right now.
Second, I’m running a End of Summer 45% Off Sale for my comic strip, Run of the House, which brings the monthly cost down to only $1.65/month. Published twice a week, that’s 104 cartoons a year delivered straight to your inbox! While I probably split my time between writing and cartooning 70/30, I do really enjoy creating the strip, feel I’m slowly getting better at it, and I’d love your support. You can sign up today at www.runofthehouse.net. The deal expires the first day of fall: September 22, 2025. Here’s a recent strip, one that only paying subscribers received:
Our summer’s been a mix of trips to the Oregon coast and the Sunriver area up near Bend, kind of the usual, but the biggest trip of the year so far was to southeast Florida. Back in April, Heidi and I flew to Miami, rented a convertible, and spent a wonderful ten days ranging everywhere from Palm Beach to Key West. Neither of us had ever been to the Miami area, and it certainly lived up to its reputation as a world class city. Since it has very little public transportation other than busses, the maze of Interstates, highways, and other roads is constantly clogged with nerve-wracking traffic, which was really my only complaint. Weather was in mid-seventies, with low humidity and almost no rain. We drove all the way down to the southern most point in the United States, visited the Hemmingway Museum, and enjoyed margaritas on a rooftop bar over looking the Atlantic Ocean.
While we’re on the subject of famous authors, most of you know my love for John D. Macdonald’s Travis McGee series, so I couldn’t resist visiting the Bahia Mar marina. In the books, this is where McGee’s houseboat, The Busted Flush, was anchored in slip F-18. After MacDonald died, the marina even allowed a plaque to be placed at the supposed location in memory of author and his beloved series. After a remodel back in the 90s, however, slip F-18 no longer exists, so the marina moved the plaque indoors. There are too many photos of our trip to drop on one page, and nobody but us would want to see them anyway, but here’s a gallery of just a few for those who want a taste of our trip. Great fun.
Driving on US1 at sunset.
Hemmingway House in Key West.
Bahia Mar in Fort Lauderdale.
John D. MacDonald plague at Bahia Mar.
Hard to give a sense of how awesome US1 to Key West is unless you take a shot from off the road on one of the keys.
The Carlyle at Miami Beach. The Golden Girls spinoff, The Golden Palace, used this as an exterior shot.
The Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach was one of the most moving exhibits I’ve ever experienced.
Pompano Beach, just north of Miami, where we stayed for the second part of our trip.
Speaking of fun, I’ve been enjoying writing the latest book, which, just as I eluded to above, doesn’t always amount to much when it comes to how readers might respond, but creating with joy is always more pleasant than creating with angst and frustration, even if I’ve come to accept that it is quite possible to love doing something even if it sometimes makes you miserable, maybe especially because it makes you miserable. I know that’s a strange thing to say, but I think one of the biggest misconceptions about taking a serious approach to something in the arts, whether that’s writing, painting, music, or some other pursuit, is that it should always make you happy.
Happiness is like the sunshine. It comes and goes. It can be very pleasant when it’s here, but it can be a very empty pursuit to seek it just for its own sake, and, strangely enough, often results in feeling unhappy more of the time if you do. One of the things I enjoy most about writing is that it’s often difficult. Not always. But if it was easy, I don’t think I’d enjoy it as much. Along these lines, I’d highly recommend Oliver Burkeman’s The Antidote: Happiness for People who Hate Positive Thinking. I read this wonderful book recently and was floored by how much Burkeman’s thinking mirrors my own, and how much the journey he takes in this book matches my own journey in recent years: first becoming disenchanted with an obsessive and ultimately self-defeating fixation on goals and rah-rah positive thinking that so took hold of me as a young man, to ultimately trying to fashion my own working philosophy by taking what I felt were the best (and often common) elements of Buddhism, Taoism, and Stoicism, with a generous helping of modern psychology thrown in for good measure. It may sound like a terribly negative book, but it’s really about how freeing it can be to embrace insecurity, as Alan Watts memorably put it, and stop trying to force things all the time.
Hopefully back before too long, but if not, well, I’ll try not to force things . . .
I hope you’re all doing well as the summer winds down. With my son back in high school (his junior year), and my daughter soon returning to OSU, the house should be a bit quieter heading into the autumn months. Well, except for Rosie barking at our mail carrier, but everyone has a job to do, right? Hate to deprive her of her sense of purpose. Most of the time, she’s content to curl up in my office as I work. The perfect writing companion!
Speaking of writing, I’ve got a new book out! While Looking for Little Reddoesn’t neatly fit into any one particular genre, it’s the kind of story that combines a lot of the elements that I love as a reader – a mystery with a twist, a touching love story, and a new take on a time-honored fairy tale all rolled into one – so I’m hoping you enjoy it too.
More information about the book, including links to where it can be purchased, is below. The ebook is available right now from all major retailers. The print version, a nice case laminate (a hard cover with a glossy cover instead of a separate jacket, which fits the fairy tale feel, I think) is currently only available from Amazon, but that will probably change soon. Global supply issues have slowed down the shipping of the print version, so keep that in mind if you’d prefer paper. It may take a few weeks to get to you.
What if all the old stories turned out to be true?
On a rainy night at a tiny Oregon college, a shadowy figure at the back of the hall interrupts Bullwick Farley’s mythology lecture: “Little Red Riding Hood has done something terrible,” he says, “and I desperately need your help before it’s too late.”
Just another story in a class all about stories? A myth, a fable, a tale told and retold? The students might think so. But ten years after leaving a life where even the strangest stories turn out to be true, Farley faces a choice. Stick with his comfortable, if lonely, life as a professor. Or risk it all to go looking for the woman who broke his heart.
A mystery with a twist, a touching love story, and a new take on a time-honored fairy tale, Looking for Little Red provides rare insights on the power of stories to shape our lives, and the importance of memories, even painful ones.
We had some snow the other day. Just an inch or so. As usual in the Willamette Valley, it didn’t last long. Otherwise, I’m seeing hints of spring everywhere—both in reality and metaphorically. The days are getting longer. On my daily walks, I’ve started to see crocuses and other plants start to bloom. A new President in the United States has brought a palpable sense of relief to those of us who believe in decency, democracy, and at least an attempt to adhere to the truth. The vaccine roll out, while bumpy, is picking up steam. We’ve lost a lot of good people to COVID-19, and the winter of this pandemic isn’t over by a long shot, but at least it feels like we’re heading in the right direction.
Productivity has been pretty good lately, mostly by just sticking to a daily word quota and staying off the Internet until after 5 p.m. Funny how straightforward it is, really, and how I have to keep reminding myself of the basics year after year. I feel like a Zen Buddhist coming back to the breath. Read a lot (breath comes in), write a lot (breath goes out). When I’ve taught writing courses, I generally start out by telling the students that if they stick to a daily word count of new material no matter what, plus read at least a book a week, they’ll probably get good enough to eventually develop an audience. If they don’t, no matter how many classes they take, they probably won’t. I tell them if half of them quit the class right now and did just that, while the other half went on to MFA programs but didn’t commit to being at least moderately prolific writers and voracious readers, I would bet on the half that quit my class. I usually got a lot of shocked expressions, but it really is true, I think.
Here’s a last little thought on this, to illustrate that being “moderately prolific” is not as difficult as some might suggest. A lot of people consider Robert B. Parker, a grand master of crime fiction, a fairly prolific writer. Now, we don’t know if he wrote under other names, or how many manuscripts he had to throw away, but if you take him at his word (always a dubious proposition for someone who makes stuff up for a living), he was a light outliner who mostly wrote one draft and he didn’t write under pseudonyms. He published something like 70 books that he wrote himself (I’ve probably read half of them), which amounted to about 4 million words. His books were fairly short by modern standards, so keep that in mind, but few people would argue about the average quality (he has duds like all long-term writers). He had about a 40-year career before he passed away. If you do the math, he would have had to write . . . about 250 words/day.
One manuscript page.
I know that’s pretty amazing for a lot of folks, and yes, these weren’t epic fantasy tomes we’re talking about, but still, he just did the work day after day. Certainly there are writers who have written much, much more, but I mention Parker because few would argue that he didn’t leave behind a substantial body of high quality work. Because when you get right down to it, being prolific is just another way of saying you’re consistent.
A Bit of Whimsy
That’s a quick five-minute sketch of an Irish Setter from one of my drawing notebooks. Not long ago I committed to at least a drawing a day. Some days I only do one, some days five or more. They’re not really meant for public exposure, but I thought it might be fun to share one now and then. The goal is very simple, whether I’m drawing something I see, something from a magazine, or a picture that I bring up on my tablet: to recreate a sense of what I see (the fundamental skill of all visual arts, or so it was explained to me by a very good professional artist and teacher once) in just a few minutes.
Scott Recommends
The Roadside History of Oregon by Bill Gulick. Back in my twenties when I owned a used bookstore, I used to dip into this book when it passed through the store, but I’d never taken the time to read it cover to cover. When my daughter gave it to me as a Christmas gift, I figured now was the time. I’m glad I did. Gulick’s sprawling history of my home state, using the highways as a loose structure, is full of fascinating anecdotes of the many colorful figures who populated Oregon’s early days. It’s particularly wonderful since I’ve visited the majority of the cities listed. I’ve always said that Oregon is like a microcosm of the country as a whole, since it has a little of everything: high desert, lush valleys, coastal regions, mountain peaks, all within a day’s drive, all the regions very distinct from one another. There’s a climate and style of life for just about everyone in Oregon, which makes it such an absolute gem.
American Hustle. I missed this David O. Russell’s film when it came out in 2013. A New York grifter and con man (a nearly unrecognizable Christian Bale) is forced to work with an FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) to perform an elaborate sting operation to avoid jail for himself and his lover (Amy Adams). Loaded with other stars (Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, Robert De Niro), it’s the kind of film that often loses its way when too many actors ham it up on screen, but that didn’t happen here. Great acting, great writing—it was a fun film with some nice twists.
Love Just Screws Everything Up by Lynn Johnston. The 17th collection of the popular For Better or For Worse comic strip, following the life and times of the Patterson family, this strip ran for 29 years and ended its run in 2008. I’d caught the odd strip here and there over the years, back when I was still mostly reading the comics via the funny pages in a newspaper, but I’d never bothered to read a full collection. It’s great stuff. Unlike most strips, Johnston ages the characters (not quite real time, maybe a a third of real time?), so you follow the family’s many ups and downs in life just like the rest of us.
Bad Business by Robert B. Parker. Spenser starts off investigating whether a woman’s husband is cheating on her and ends up uncovering corporate malfeasance on a massive scale, a very unorthodox love triangle, oh, and several murders to boot. A fun read, and the extended cast (the beautiful and intelligent Susan, the inscrutable Hawk, and others) always help bring the story to life. While I enjoy Parker’s spare writing style, this was a bit bare bones even for him. It really is the bare minimum, I think, and there were scenes with almost no setting whatsoever. Still, it’s always a pleasant afternoon I get to spend with Spenser and company.
Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane. A books that begins as a fascinating character study and picks up steam as the suspense, and twists, mount, Lehane’s book chronicles the story of Rachel Childs, a once-promising journalist who becomes a shut-in, and the mystery of a husband who may not be what he seems. I haven’t read too many of Lehane’s books (mostly the Kenzi and Gennaro P.I. series, which I’m a big fan of ), but I will definitely be looking for more. My issue is that I seldom want to read a book if I’ve seen the movie it’s based on, and since I’m seldom reading what’s popular now, I’ve often seen the movie before I get to the book. Certainly a problem for me, not Lehane!
