A boxcar might be the last place you would expect to find fifteen rules to live by, yet those are exactly what the Knights of the Road drafted at their 1889 National Hobo Convention in St. Louis. Even more surprising, they turned out to be good rules for everyone—not just hobos—and they are as appropriate today as they were 130 years ago. You can check them out, and download your own copy, here.

Bernard Zakheim was my friend and mentor. When I began to write over forty years ago, his encouragement was all important. Every writer should be so lucky.

In 1979 Bernard challenged me to write Tractored Out to accompany his painting of the same name, a painting inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The moment I first saw it — leaning against a wall in a leaky shed at Farm Arts in Sebastopol — it spoke to me just as Steinbeck’s writing had. Bernard, who’d rubbed shoulders with Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Marc Chegall, and studied with Diego Rivera in Mexico, wanted to foster my emotional connection to his work. Finding words to match his images did just that.

No, I didn’t actually get to write with Jack London recently, but I got to do the next best thing, spending an afternoon in the Author’s Circle at Wake Robin Lodge, where he shared the first draft of Call of the Wild for the first time. Jack’s collection of traveling stories, The Road, was very much on my mind, because the first chapter of my own road novel, River of Steel has just been excerpted by The Write Launch. Follow the link and come along for the ride!

Thanks to you, just this week my suspense novel, A Matter of Time, surpassed 1,000 downloads! It is thrilling to see so many people reading and enjoying this book . . . as writers that is what we live for.

I was honored to be the Master of Ceremonies at the commemorative celebration marking The Sonoma Developmental Center’s 127 years of service. Though it is about to close, the presenters beautifully captured the historic legacy of this remarkable institution, and look ahead to what the future may hold for this extraordinary resource in the heart of Sonoma Valley.

Jim Shere has just written a beautiful piece for The Kenwood Press called Two Tales of the Drooling Ward.

My latest novel, River of Steel, is about the “Knights of the Road”, and Catherine Clemens Sevenau’s uncle Arden was the real deal, a classic professional hobo…