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Mr. Homan came under scrutiny after he was said to be recorded last year taking $50,000 in cash from undercover F.B.I. agents.

I do a good amount of research for my novels – my story is fiction, but I want the surrounding events and loci to be based on accurate history. I am proud, and a bit obsessive, about this. Alternative histories are fun (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Inglourious Basterds, Yesterday, … you know), but those creations are for someone else to conceive.

I do a good amount of research for my novels – my story is fiction, but I want the surrounding events and loci to be based on accurate history. I am proud, and a bit obsessive, about this. Alternative histories are fun (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Inglourious Basterds, Yesterday, … you know), but those creations are for someone else to conceive.

I knew I needed help. I just didn’t know where to find it. Halfway through writing my first book, Embracing the Elephant, I hit an impasse. I had already changed the verb tense three times (twice rewriting everything I’d already written to match the new tense) because it wasn’t “sounding” the way I wanted. My goal was to write in the style of the 19th century (the time of the book’s setting) without having the weight of 19th century prose on its shoulders.

I knew I needed help. I just didn’t know where to find it. Halfway through writing my first book, Embracing the Elephant, I hit an impasse. I had already changed the verb tense three times (twice rewriting everything I’d already written to match the new tense) because it wasn’t “sounding” the way I wanted. My goal was to write in the style of the 19th century (the time of the book’s setting) without having the weight of 19th century prose on its shoulders.

A recording from Don Lemon's live video

Last week, I wrote about opening sentences of novels…and that got me thinking. What about the opening sentences of other books that may not be on the “Best of” list, but are my favorites? Did that first-sentence hook apply to them, too? So, here is my opinion of the opening sentence in each of five of my favorite novels, in no particular order: …

Chatted with Heather Cox Richardson about the statewide effort that will enable Californians to fight back against President Trump’s attempts to rig Texas’ elections next year.

The sentence fragment in the title has been, for well over a century, largely considered the worst opening sentence of any work of literature: It was a dark and stormy night. Although Victorian writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton has been credited with the phrase’s infamy, it seems he was not responsible for its origin. Apparently, the description had already been used for hundreds of years prior to Bulwer-Lytton, in various permutations.

A baker’s dozen of important steps to fight Trump fascism

I love good dialogue. In books, in movies, in plays. I’m enthralled with clever dialogue that moves the story forward or divulges important traits about the speaker or provides clues about motives …

Stuart Stevens gives his mea culpa for helping make the GOP what it is today. And he asks Republicans to speak up now and oppose Trump pardoning a convicted sex-trafficker. Before it's too late.

In my lifetime, I have seen incredible technological changes. When I was a child, transistor radios were first introduced, TV stations (of which there were a mere handful) broadcast only in black and white, roller skates clipped onto your shoes and had metal wheels. When I was a teenager, my dad got a Texas Instrument calculator that rendered his trusty slide rule obsolete (and, as an engineer, that was very important – he was so excited), cassette tapes started to replace vinyl albums, telephones were introduced with keypads instead of cumbersome dials, personal computers didn’t exist except in the mind of that odd young man who lived down the street from me and went to my high school, Steve Wozniak.