New York is a city without children. Even when you do see them, it’s an oddity, like the circus is in town and the performers are being lead up 6th Avenue from their train cars. I know there are lots of kids in the parks and in the schools. I’m thinking about the streets, which [...]

Breaking with all recent history, I went to a writers conference recently. I’ve avoided them for all kinds of reasons, mostly involving my total lack of interest in sitting in a room with a group of writers I don’t know and having my work critiqued. Not that I mind having my work critiqued. I just [...]

A student of my wife’s was nice enough to read Shimmer and send me some questions about the book recently and which I’m repeating here, if only because these are the sorts of questions people often ask. This was the second part of his questions. (The first part was here.) Another of my questions was [...]

A student of my wife’s was nice enough to read Shimmer recently and send me some questions about the book, which I finally managed to answer. This was the first part of his questions. I’ll post the second part next week. Dear Mr. Barnes, I am the student of Mrs. Crosby’s that read your book. [...]

I had to write a biographical blurb about myself recently as part of the promotion for this TV show I’m going to start hosting on our local public television station. I hate writing biographical blurbs. My tendency is to write something short, flat and restrained. But not in an interesting or even self-deprecating way. Instead, [...]

Some of the very earliest ideas for Shimmer came while I was working as a marketing assistant for a big accounting firm in New York. I hated everything about the job. Except for the view. I was in the World Financial Center next to the World Trade Center. The group of 20 or so people [...]

I’m on the mailing list for the Church of Scientology. Every day, I get an average of four pieces of direct mail related to Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard. Newsletters, book offers, catalogs selling a seemingly endless number of lectures by L. Ron Hubbard, and numerous invitations to training events at schools, resorts and [...]

Somehow, when I was 35 years old, I found myself as Chief Operating Officer of a $15 million publishing company. We employed 200 people, we published all over the country, we had plans to grow even bigger, faster. I think I got that title largely because of a moment some years earlier, when we were [...]

I’m looking for a new agent. I hate looking for an agent. Maybe some agent will read this before I even start the process of reaching out to people. Maybe they’ll magically, send me an email saying that they’d love to represent me. Like the magical love affair in a sweet and simple book. I’m [...]

I don’t think I ever picked how I write, or even a genre in which to write. It’s more, for me, about the voice in my head. I’m not sure I know where that voice came from. Maybe I don’t even want to know where it came from. But I started to write because, somewhere [...]