Reading Mission to Paris is like sipping a fine Chateau Margaux: Sublime!

. . . why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.

I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold.

No one cared what St. Louis thought, although the city got a wink for pluck.

Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

Reading Mission to Paris is like sipping a fine Chateau Margaux: Sublime!

Digression is my passion. I love telling the main stories, but in some ways, what I love most is using those narratives as a way of stringing together the interesting stories that people have kind of forgotten, and that are kind of surprising. The problem is, how do you pare stories away so that the book doesn't become a distracting jumble of material, and readers lose focus? In my experience, there's really only one way to do that. I pack it all in with the rough draft, then count on myself and my trusted readers to tell me what's good and what's not good.