My novel Christina’s Portrait will be published by Wordhaven Press in November. I will describe my book in this series of posts. You can read other posts in the Christina’s Portrait cat…

My granddaughter picked an interesting time to study eighth grade US history. The past is especially relevant to everything we’re going through right now. For starters, look at the War of 181…

TikTok video by Matthew Arnold Stern

Years ago, I posed our cat Naomi in a photo to promote my novels. In the days before AI slop, cats were a good way to get attention on the Internet. Yesterday, Naomi died at age 18. She had develop…

There are stranger ways to promote a book than having a United States Senator highlight a plot point. That happened when Rand Paul and Senate Republicans tried to use Dr. Anthony Fauci as a bogeyma…

The Matthew Arnold Stern newsletter is free and published monthly. It consists of news, featured books and posts, upcoming events, and interviews with authors and others in the book community. You …

This has been a rough World Cup for Argentina. It’s not just because they lost to Spain in the final, 1-0. That country’s ugliness has been exposed for the whole world to see. Rude fans…

My wife suggested that I get a souvenir to celebrate the Rams making it to Super Bowl LIII. I told her I would wait until after the game since I already had Rams shirts to wear. I figured if the Ra…

I started this year with a post about how my novel Christina’s Portrait has been in the works for nearly 50 years. I ended it by saying, “At some point, it will find a publishing home a…

In addition to Independence Day and all the birthdays we’re celebrating, July is Disability Pride Month. It even has its own flag. You might wonder why we need another pride month when we alr…

I wanted to ignore the World Cup this year. With the way our country is right now, how could it be anything but a disaster? We treated the Iranian team like enemy combatants by having them stay in …

With the fiasco that is the 250th anniversary celebration of the United States, I’ve been seeing a lot of people on social media ask, “What was the Bicentennial like?” As someone …

The Matthew Arnold Stern newsletter is free and published monthly. It consists of news, featured books and posts, upcoming events, and interviews with authors and others in the book community. You …

✨ Getting to Know the Author For readers who are just discovering you, who is Matthew Arnold Stern in your own words? [MAS] I consider myself an occupational fiction author because work plays a role i...

The Matthew Arnold Stern newsletter is free and published monthly. It consists of news, featured books and posts, upcoming events, and interviews with authors and others in the book community. You …

As more horrific details emerge from the Epstein Files, we cry out, “When will these people face accountability for their crimes?” The sad and likely answer is never. Epstein and his as…

YouTube video by DrinksInTheLibrary

Kenny Loggins was recently inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. I feel this tribute is well deserved, not just for his long string of unforgettable hits, but for one particular song that inspired me when I needed it the most. I wrote about "Keep The Fire" before and why it's more than yacht rock to me. Like everything else of importance in my life, I wanted to find a way to incorporate it into my stories.

The Matthew Arnold Stern newsletter is free and published monthly. It consists of news, featured books and posts, upcoming events, and interviews with authors and others in the book community. You …

When this is all over, historians will build careers studying this moment in history. When this is all over, a diary written by a young victim will become an international bestseller and translated into dozens of languages. When this is all over, Renee Nicole Good's poetry will be included in literature books. When this is all over, science fiction will depict brutal soldiers of a tyrannical regime with uniforms similar to ICE agents.

Do you hate “cancel culture”? So do I. I hate giving up on things because their creators have become so hideous and despicable that I can’t enjoy them anymore. I remember when the…

Halloween is this week, but we have more to be afraid of than ghosts and ghouls. We see real monsters on our screens every day. So we need to talk about fear and what we should do about it. Preside…

It’s January 8, 2026, and I’m back to work on my writing. I got my beta review comments back for Escape from Arzack’s Castle from Entrada Publishing. I’m still searching for a publishing home for Christina’s Portrait. My full request was rejected, but I still have submissions out and a fellow author who offered to look at my manuscript. And I’m facing a question: How can I write at a time like this?

Welp, it didn't take long for 2026 to 2026. When you look at the long, sordid history between the United States and its southern neighbors, the abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife isn't unusual. From the moment the Spanish and Portuguese fled this hemisphere, the United States replaced them as the imperial power. We took our neighbors' lands, plundered their resources, drove their people into poverty and dependency, and backed corrupt leaders.

As writers, we're often asked, "How long does it take you to write a novel?" In the case of Christina's Portrait, it was nearly 50 years. That's how long it has taken me to find the words to express my feelings about the death of Mary Ann Henderson. If you've been following my website, you know that it was an event that shook our high school experience and forced us to look at mortality at a young age.

5/5: If you like spice in your cowboy romances, you'll love DON'T LEAVE ME BEHIND by Bailey Johnson. But it's not the heat that makes it a great read; it's the light. The romance between Eleanor "Le...

Thirty-five years ago, I made a beautiful woman a promise: "I promise to take you as my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, in sickness and in health, for as long as we both shall live." Although we solemnize such words by calling it a vow and making it in front of a religious or legal authority, it's still only as good as our willingness to keep our word.

The Matthew Arnold Stern newsletter is free and published monthly. It consists of news, featured books and posts, upcoming events, and interviews with authors and others in the book community. You …

2025 has been an awful year, and it's trying to squeeze in as much awfulness as possible these last few weeks. As crazy as 2025 has been, 2026 will be crazier. How do I know? I'm not a psychic, but it's not hard to guess the likely outcome of all the actions taken in the past year. But I'm sure 2026 will be wild because of a strange pattern of coincidences I've experienced throughout my life.

In "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse," first published in 1855, Matthew Arnold wrote: Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth, I wait forlorn. Matthew Arnold expressed the strain of seeing a faith he learned to reject as he contemplated the end of the romantic era.

It has become a holiday meme, an earworm, and the bane of retail workers from the time Christmas merch goes on shelves to the last of the after-Christmas sales. And it was recently embroiled in controversy, thanks to a Sephora commercial that mocks the stress on consumers and workers during a difficult year. So, let's talk about "All I Want for Christmas Is You." The song itself, as they say, "is not that deep." But in these times, it has a lot to say.

Trigger warning: child rape. I saw a couple of videos on TikTok that left people speechless. The first was from a podcast where a Trump supporter said that he didn't care if he was in the Epstein Files or did any of the horrible things he's alleged to have done. He then had the audacity to ask the interviewer, "What's so bad about child rape?" The interviewer was left speechless.

The Matthew Arnold Stern newsletter is free and published monthly. It consists of news, featured books and posts, upcoming events, and interviews with authors and others in the book community. You …

What's rewarding about moderating a panel discussion is that you can encourage brilliant discussions. What's disappointing is that you're so focused on what the panelists are saying that you can't write any of them down. Our panel discussion at Indie Author Day in Anaheim, "AI—Does It Have a Place in the Writers' World?" was filled with that type of brilliant, thoughtful discussion.

Black Yé'ii: (the Evil One) - Kindle edition by Lewis, Joseph. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Black Yé'ii: (the Evil One).

I've talked about trends and tropes I've used in my fiction. Here's another one. Let's start with Offline: played basketball in high school. She was a dependable bench player who was strong on defense and had a good outside jump shot. She had no qualms about taking on a man, so she challenged Terry to a game one day after work.

A year ago, I thought it was all over. Not just with politics, but in the future I wanted for my family and my dreams as an author. In the months that followed, I regained hope, looked for ways to fight back, got off the doomscrolling habit, became willing to stand up for my beliefs in spite of fear…