General Posts

As the father of two Gen Z boys, I’ve followed with interest the sociological observations about the problems with boys of their generation, particularly the struggle with traditional masculine identity. The problem made me think about books, especially middle grade fiction, a category intended for the formative ages of 8 – 13 and one for…

KWC was honored with a silver medal in the IBPA Book Awards in the category of Middle Grade Fiction. Winning books can be found here: https://www.ibpabookaward.org/winners-young-reader-fiction I have to say, the gold medal book, Armando and the Amazing Animal Race, by Diana Schaffter, was a worthy winner, a very exciting adventure story. You can read…

I’m excited to announce that Knights Without Ceremony won the 2026 Book Excellence Award in the category of Pre-Teen Fiction. I guess that’s pretty cool.

The young man on the left is a student at a local university. He’s an immigrant from Britain and comes from a wealthy family. He attended an elite private school in England before coming to the U.S. for his university education. He’s also the president of the university’s College Republicans. (I’m not naming the young…

I’m excited to announce that KWC was named a notable book of 2025! Unfortunately, I can’t share the organization that selected the book. Or maybe fortunately, if the only organization that you know that has a notable book list is the New York Times. Wouldn’t that be nice? I can tell you that it isn’t…

To paraphrase Jane Austen, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a parent in possession of children who have become independent must be in want of a purpose.” I have two boys, one in college, the other headed there soon. Both boys are largely independent and exploring the world on their own. I now see…

A book cover tells a lot about a book. The overall image immediately speaks to the intended target audience and often suggests the book’s genre. The title provides a tantalizing hint of the story within, and the font can set the tone. And then there’s the name of the author—the one who wrote the book.…

I started Knights Without Ceremony twenty-seven years ago, before the rising awareness of underrepresentation in the authorship and subject matter of books, especially those for kids. After a few flirtations with literary agents—and an offer of representation I declined—the manuscript went into the proverbial desk drawer for a couple of decades while my writing went…

The cover for my new book, Knights Without Ceremony: Insurrection, is not typical for upper middle grade medieval adventures—and for a very good reason. In the summer of 2024, I engaged ten middle school boys from my town of Winchester, Massachusetts, to provide feedback on an early draft of the book. But I also asked…

When told that some of the money he was getting from the Republican tax cuts was coming from Weather Service staff elimination that can be directly linked to the deaths of over two dozen children at a Texas summer camp, Dan Framington, shopping for his second Maserati with the anticipated tax cut proceeds, said that…