An interview with, and a new dark thriller novel by, Eric Shapiro.

08 Oct, 2020

"Red Dennis," Eric Shapiro's new novel, is out. I haven't read it yet but the reviews are excellent, which isn't news to me. Eric and I co-founded Ghostwriters Central in 2002. We were partners for some 15 years. While we had this business together, he did an astonishing amount of writing, so I can assure you Red Dennis won't disappoint. He's a passionate and supremely capable writer. Stanley Wheeler interviewed Eric recently. One of his other books, designed to motivate writers to write, is "Ass Plus Seat." What a great title. Sit down and freakin' write. LOL Read Mr. Wheeler's interview with Eric Shapiro here. Best wishes, Eric.

An interview with, and a new dark thriller novel by, Eric Shapiro.

October 8, 2020May 9, 2025

“Red Dennis,” Eric Shapiro’s new novel, is out. I haven’t read it yet but the reviews are excellent, which Read More...

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.

Quentin Tarantino

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.