Blog
Career Milestone Unlocked! ✅
When I started out on this journey toward becoming a fiction author, I had no idea what to expect. It turned out to be a lot harder, a lot more entrepreneurial, and a lot more work than I anticipated. The writing and editing are the stumbling blocks people typically...
Inside the Scene: Foggy Salt Marsh
The Scene Excerpt: The Washashore, Chapter 37 When they’d crossed the low bridge over the salt marsh, the remaining traces of dawn fog drifted between the reeds and out over the marsh’s main channel. It filtered the gathering light and nearly obscured the doe crossing...
Seeing Before Writing
(Photo gallery at bottom) Long before I started writing fiction, I was walking around with a camera. That habit trained me to notice light, edges, and small telling details—the same raw material I now use to build scenes with words. Photography taught me how much of...
Newsletter — January 2026
Worth Your Weight In Pie Field notes from Christopher about the Silas Lopez mysteries ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ...
Why I Wrote the Heart of My First Novel Backwards (And Why It Saved the Book)
The Writing I Did Before Chapter One // Before I typed a single line of the first chapter of The Washashore, I wrote all twenty-three scenes featuring Wren and Silas. Not an outline. Not notes. The actual scenes—drafted, revised, and polished—before I touched anything...
Washashore Excerpt—Wren’s Upbringing
Introduction Once people learn a bit about Silas (e.g. why his character was created, and what his upbringing was like), they invariably want to know why this calloused, plainspoken horseman picked the daughter of one of New England’s oldest and wealthiest...
