While I worked on Cinderella and the Devil, I was also working on Mistress Peterson, which has some overlap with Cinderella and Galatea in the Poconos, which is the story of how the Petersons got together. I'm also (kinda sorta, in the background less than diligently) writing a science fiction novel that will also be a part of a series.

I read the reviews on the publisher's site. Usually it's the title wording, occasionally the blurb that catches my interest. I read a lot from Gutenberg.org, searching for writers I've liked.

When I was a kid I read just about everything by Eric Frank Russell. I read all of Robert A. Heinlein's boys' books, pretty much all he wrote up until Stranger in a Strange Land; I didn't find anything after that point that I liked.I enjoy almost all of Raphael Sabatini, starting with Captain Blood. through all his best: Scaramouche, Mistress Wilding, and of course Saint Martin's Summer.

I start out with a general idea. In the case of Cinderella and the Devil, it was "what could an abused child accomplish, given the chance?" I write the story chapter by chapter, putting maybe twelve or fifteen hundred words on the screen per. Then I go back over it a few dozen times, asking myself "will that sentence read better reworded differently. Characters grow in importance or diminish as called for, growing into their personalities. I Google a lot, and Wikipedia. I end up inserting more chapters, occasionally rearranging them. Eventually I reach a point where I can't stand looking at it anymore and either publish or set it aside for three months. If I read it again after three month and it reads pretty well I publish.

The first "story" I ever read that I recall was Dick and Jane. The six-year-old version of me knew damned well that real people don't talk like that. "Run, Spot,run," indeed! "Go get it, boy!" would have made more sense, even though today I understand exactly what they were doing. I try to have my characters speak colloquial English that's appropriate to the setting, so maybe that's where I got it from..

Pretty much everything except the "bare shoulders on a windswept height with her paramour's hair blowing in the wind." I'd also have to qualify that was a "no sympathetic vampires or werewolves, no zombies, and no post-apocalyptic world," if only because they've been done to death. I enjoyed each of the Harry Potter novels. J.K. Rowling's descriptions are excellent and her characters are endearing. I like Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe novels and his Viking novels. Sabatini, of course, and Rider Haggard, Zane Grey, even Louis L'Amour. I get fidgety without something nearby to read.

I was born in Kentucky, moved to Pennsylvania as a small child, and joined the Army when I got out of high school. So there are lots of different places for me to set stories. I've met lots and lots of people, many of whom now live in my books. I've done, seen, heard, and felt things, many of which are described. I won't write something set in Finland, for example, because I've never been there, don't know enough about it. But I could have one of my characters eat reindeer meat in Norway because I've done it. Or he could eat chapatis in Karachi, which I haven't been to but which I've researched for the past fourteen years.

Alice is physically a young girl named Adela I knew once in Texas. Emotionally she's the "what if" of Rita Fisher, a nine-year-girl who was beaten to death in Baltimore in 1996. The drug raid and Ben's subsequent conviction are authentic, except for Alice's presence. John Robie the Cat is my cat and the Peterson dogs are my dogs. I dated Cassandra when I was in high school and Don Brennan was a Maryland, not a Pennsylvania, state policeman.

Good reader reviews. They're nectar and ambrosia for writers.

That's a nonsensical question. Lots of books simply don't compare to lots of others. Can you really compare Herodotus with Citizen of the Galaxy (Heinlein)? I liked them both, for different reasons. I saw the movie Tom Jones before I read the Fielding novel. They're both funny and endearing. I enjoyed B.M.Bowers The Ranch at the Wolverine despite holes in the plot, mainly because the characters are so beautifully drawn. The Hornblower stories were all good, and the Richard Sharpe series carries on the tradition of following a fellows' career from insignificance to glory. I enjoyed Don Johanson's stories about excavating Lucy in Ethiopia and Kathleen Kenyon's book on Jericho. Wellington: The Years of the Sword reads like a novel, Carola Oman's Nelson not so much. They're all very good books and all for different reasons.

It doesn't really matter that much. I currently most use a Samsung Galaxy notepad. I've got a notepad Verizon gave me when I signed up for phone service, and it's about as good. Bother are Android, both weigh about the same. I have a Kindle, my third or fourth, but it's limited in formats. I have a couple old Blackberry Playbooks. They're the heaviest of the lot. I still end up reading my phone sometimes.