So Five Fathoms Beneath is live!

So at long last, Five Fathoms Beneath is live! I’d still love to get some readers who are interested in a FREE review copy; please contact me if that’s something you’d be interested. I only ask that in consideration for the FREE book, you will consider writing me a review on Goodreads or Amazon, or…

Writers and Poets, oh my!

As a novel which leans literary, and with a main character who loves literature and quotes it frequently, Five Fathoms Beneath features bits and pieces of several works by famous poets and authors. Here are a few of the writers who get passing mention or are quoted in Five Fathoms Beneath. (Some of the brief…

"The Star Thrower"

Five Fathoms Beneath is in many ways a (very) dark story, but it’s also a hopeful one. And part of the hope which underlies the novel comes from a story Alec tells his son Brose in the first chapter. “Lemme tell you a story. I heard it from an American anthropologist when I visited the States,…

Why the title, Five Fathoms Beneath?

Titles are very … personal. One reason I chose to go indie with my novel was I didn’t want anyone dictating to me what the title of my book should be. What can I say? I’m independent-minded that way. Anyway. The title, Five Fathoms Beneath, derives, as many titles do, from Shakespeare, in this case…

Necklace Starfish

Toward the end of my novel, the narrator receives an unexpected present from his father in the form of a hand-carved and hand-painted Necklace Starfish. So what does a real Necklace Starfish look like? Something like this!  (Photo taken by Richard Ling, Creative Commons Licensed through Flickr.) The Necklace Starfish, also known as the Peppermint…

Do you like my cover?

Do you like the cover for Five Fathoms Beneath? It doesn’t matter what you think? It matters what I think? Well, I *love* my cover. Being a photographer, I’m a *very* visual person, so I was both excited and nervous to work with a cover designer. I ended up choosing Tim Barber of Dissect Designs…

Hope Memorial Bridge

Although my novel mostly uses fictionalized versions of real places and entirely fictional places (there is no Stirling University or Mercer Medical Center, and these places are not deliberately intended to invoke any real place), a pivotal scene in my novel plays out on the Hope Memorial Bridge, known locally as the Lorain Carnegie Bridge.…

Wordle for Five Fathoms Beneath

I thought it would be fun to do a Wordle for Five Fathoms Beneath. What’s a Wordle you ask? A Wordle is “a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.” It gives more emphasis to words that appear more commonly in a piece of text or manuscript. I entered the entire manuscript…