In Dog of Secrets, you can expect a mystery with international stakes, a grieving young man forced to become a hero, and of course Rochester’s remarkable nose for trouble.

If you’ve already preordered, thank you. I hope you’ll spend some time with Steve and Rochester this week, and if you enjoy the book, a review on Amazon or Goodreads makes a tremendous difference in helping other readers discover the series.

My brain is like a short-wave radio constantly set to receive incoming transmissions. Ideas pop into my head while I’m driving, reading, talking to people, or listening to podcasts. Lately I’ve been pool-walking, crossing the pool in our community back and forth for a half-hour at a time.

The idea for Dog of Secrets came from a conversation with another author. He had an idea for a big thriller, but because the problem was so large, with no one person or organization behind it, he was stymied.

One part was about Iranian expats living in a community in Colombia, involved somehow in oil export. I don’t know why, but “Iranians in Colombia” sparked something in my brain. Instead of a big international thriller like the other author was planning, I realized I could move one family to Stewart’s Crossing and have danger follow them there.

Dog of Secrets is a larger book in some ways than the other golden retriever mysteries, because it connects to an oil-trading scheme. But it’s really about character and Rochester’s ability to nose out clues Steve and Rick can use.

I’ve become increasingly interested in the challenges many young men face today, and as I developed the plot another piece fell into place. A young man whose world had shrunk to computer games and his parents’ home, suddenly forced by tragedy to confront the outside world and uncover the truth about their murders.

(Remember my gaming background? I created my own game for this young man to be playing, which gives him the skills he needs to investigate.)

It brings in father-son issues, which is another theme of mine. It gave me the chance to do research, which I love, and understand the motivations of many different people, some of them good, some bad.

This is the way ideas come to me, in bits and pieces until I can fit them into a coherent plot. I often have multiple ideas floating around at once, waiting for more puzzle pieces to show up.

Right now I have ideas for two more golden mysteries, another Ormond Yard historical MM romance, and two more bodyguard books. I also have the next Smiling Dog Café book in second draft, and as soon as I get K-Pop Double Life off to my editor, I’ll dive into that, giving it one more polish before I send it to Randall for his review.

Special Edition on Curios

I’m delighted that so many of you have pre-ordered it and also bought the special edition through Curios. I loved the process of putting together the extras in that edition, and I hope to keep doing that for future books.

Dog of Secrets on Amazon

I’ll keep the Curios link up for another week in case a reader wants the special extras— the map, the Stewart’s Crossing background and the exclusive short story. I’m also making the e-book available on multiple vendors for those who prefer not to deal with Amazon.

Other Vendors

In the fall, I’ll shut down those other sellers and move the book into Kindle Unlimited.

If you haven’t picked up your copy yet, today’s the day. I hope you’ll enjoy Steve and Rochester’s newest adventure.

With love and gratitude,

Neil

When I met my husband, he had two dogs, a Yorkshire Terrier named Charlie and a Collie named Gus. Shortly after we bought our house and moved in together, Gus passed away. Marc immediately insisted we get another dog to keep Charlie company.

He’d heard of a veterinarian who owned a kennel where he brought in dogs from approved breeders, and we went over to check it out. We both fell for a golden retriever, and after the appropriate tests we brought Sam home. And I knew that as Charlie was Marc’s dog, Sam would be mine. I named him after my favorite hobbit, Samwise Gamgee.

We set about training him, and took him back to the kennel for a series of obedience lessons. Marc handled every training session, getting Sam to walk politely next to him, come when called, sit and stay and so on.

The last day of class, Marc got called in to work. I took Sam to his final exam.

Sam did not graduate. Failure was too strong a word, so we called him our obedience school dropout.

Was it my fault? Had I not practiced enough? Or was Sam simply determined to do things his own way? Looking back, I think we got our answer. Sam had plenty of intelligence. He just had strong opinions.

I worked from 9:30 to 6:00 at an IT job, and Marc worked the evening shift as an MRI tech. I’d get up at 6:30 and take Sam for a forty-five minute walk around our community and then leave him in his crate while Marc slept. When Marc woke, he’d feed and walk both dogs then put Sam back in his crate until I came home. Then I’d give Sam another long walk.

It was during those walks that we really bonded. I had an expandable leash for him so he could sniff and walk where he wanted, and I reined him in when I had to. I played with him, brushed him (lots of golden retriever fur!) and gave him treats, and he was always around me. After I went to bed, he’d stay with Marc for a while, but when I woke up I’d find him looking up at me.

He had a lot of personality quirks. If he was on the stairs with his paw over his face, that meant you couldn’t see him. If he was under my bed and didn’t want to come out, I’d have to grab his paws and drag him. He ate various pens and chewed through electronics, even though he had plenty of toys of his own.

I can’t recall the precise time when I came up with the idea to write a mystery with a dog like Sam. I do know that I was a big fan of Lilian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who series, and I thought I could write a book like hers with a dog instead of cats.

And so, with Sam slumped protectively behind my desk chair, I began to write.

Rochester began just as wild as Sam. “He was too big, too enthusiastic, too shaggy. His exuberance overwhelmed his manners.”

That was Sam all over. One day he slipped the leash and took off down the street, stopping at the mailboxes to give a neighbor a big bear hug.

Rochester channeled Sam’s exuberance and curiosity into crime-solving. I. watched him on our walks, looking for ways his natural behavior could become clues in a mystery. He sniffed, he scratched, he barked. Every detail went into my mental “Rochester file.”

I still do that, with Brody and Griffin. When they do something I haven’t noticed before, like twitching nostrils when they pee or sniffing a downed branch, I learn why and then incorporate it in the next book. My dogs have always been my research assistants. They just insist on being paid in treats.

Sam’s personality illuminated my life, and Rochester does the same for Steve and all the good people they meet. In Dog of Secrets, it’s Rochester’s warmth and love that draws Daniel Farahani out of his shell, and comforts him as he learns why his parents were killed.

Dog of Secrets releases next Monday, August 3, and I can’t wait to share Rochester’s newest adventure with you

Sam has been gone for many years now, but his photographs still sit on the bookshelf beside my desk. Every time I write another Rochester adventure, I glance over at them and remember the dog who started it all.

With love and gratitude,

Neil

What can you tell me about my father?

You probably know that fathers and sons are a theme I regularly return to in books. From Liam’s alcoholic father in the Have Body, Will Guard books, to Steve’s warm connection to his dad in the golden retriever mysteries, fathers and sons pop up regularly.

I knew a lot about my own dad. I knew he’d attended Casey Jones School of Aeronautics, served in the Navy during World War II, and later designed helicopter airframes. But there were gaps I’d never thought much about.

I told Chat what I knew. I learned that Casey Jones wasn’t just a trade school—it was one of the government’s major wartime aviation training centers. My father hadn’t entered the Navy as an ordinary recruit. He already possessed valuable technical skills.

I stopped there. Wait, my father was trained as a mechanic? He was terrific with his hands, had a full basement workshop, and could build or fix anything. But how did he go from that education to an engineering career?

“Your father appears to have become an engineer the way many people did in the 1940s and 1950s: through exceptional technical ability and experience. Before engineering became as credential-driven as it is today, it wasn’t uncommon for talented aircraft mechanics, draftsmen, and technicians to move into engineering roles, especially if they had wartime experience.”

OK, that was something I could understand. I was still intrigued by his military service, though. Chat continued. “Someone with his background would probably have received advanced naval aviation technical training or instructor-level preparation at basic training at the Naval Air Technical Training Center (NATTC) in Norman, Oklahoma.”

That answered a question. Why was he sent for Navy basic training in landlocked Oklahoma? My mother bragged that my father had scored very highly on the Navy’s intelligence tests, which certainly matched what I knew of him. Chat continued, “Once the Navy discovered he had both aviation training and the ability to understand technical material, he would have been a good candidate for engineering or intelligence work rather than fleet duty.”

That matches his wartime assignment to Foggy Bottom, in Washington, DC. There’s more to digest about my father’s life, including digging into government records to see what his actual rank and assignment were. I found his dog tag, so that’s a good start.

Writing fiction often helps me understand things I don’t recognize until years later. Daniel strives to figure out who his father really was after his parents’ sudden deaths. As I found myself digging through online sites and old memories, I realized I was doing much the same thing.

Maybe that’s why Dog of Secrets has become such a personal book for me. The paperback version of the special edition, with color illustrations, is now available through Curios. It will be printed and shipped by a company called Book Vault, and has color pages and all the special materials of the e-book edition.

Special Edition Print

The regular e-book edition is now available for pre-order, to be delivered on August 3. The print edition should be available as soon as Amazon approves it.

E-book at Amazon

E-book at other stores

This book will go into Kindle Unlimited sometime in the fall, and I’ll pull the title from wide distribution, so if you like your books from other sources, this is the time to get it! I’ll remind you again right before I take the links down.

My father’s story isn’t finished yet. I still have records to uncover, questions to answer, and memories to revisit. I’ll let you know what I discover.

With love and gratitude,

Neil

My story, which I called “Dog Help Us,” was too long—over 8,000 words. With a lot of scissoring, I cut it to just below the 5,000 word limit, and it was accepted.

Then the publisher who’d agreed to the anthology went out of business, and the editor wasn’t able to sell the completed volume to anyone else.

Nothing goes to waste, right? I decided to give away the story as an incentive for readers to purchase the special edition of Dog of Secrets, which will also include a few other goodies.

When I reread it months later, I realized I’d accidentally cut away part of the mystery itself. The clues were there—but the investigation wasn’t. So instead of a quick proofread, I ended up restoring scenes, rewriting the ending, and giving the story a new title.

“Dog Help Us” is felt too generic; I decided “The Fear of Dog” would be better for this story. It still fits my naming convention, but it also reflects the story itself, which explores the fear some people have that books can do more harm than good.

In Dog of Secrets, Steve mentors a young man whose parents have died—but has to be careful not to let him stray down the hacking path. It’s a story about deadly dealings in the oil industry, but with the same focus on found family and community you love in this series.

Before Dog of Secrets opens for preorder at the major retailers on July 20 (for delivery on August 3), I’m offering a special edition through Curios from July 13–19.

This edition includes:

• The complete novel, Dog of Secrets

• Exclusive bonus short story, “The Fear of Dog”

• A Guide to Stewart’s Crossing, introducing the people and places that make the town feel like home

• A map of Stewart’s Crossing

• A book club discussion guide

• YouTube and Spotify Playlists

If you’ve ever wanted to wander Main Street, visit the Chocolate Ear Café, or get a closer look at the world behind the Golden Retriever Mysteries, this special edition is for you. After this week, this edition—and the bonus materials—won’t be available again in this form.

The Curios edition will only be available until July 19, when the book pre-order window opens at Amazon and other retailers. Regular orders will start in early August.

Purchasing through Curios allows me to create this special edition with those extra files, which I can’t do at Amazon or other retailers.

If this experiment is successful, I’d love to create more special editions like this—with exclusive stories, behind-the-scenes material, maps, and perhaps even hardcover collector’s editions.

Special Edition at Curios

Next week, I’ll provide the pre-order link for Amazon. I need to get the print edition formatting done before I can do that.

With love and gratitude,

Neil

People often assume that experience taught me about graphics, programming, or marketing. It did. But the biggest lesson was something much simpler.

Computer games are great teachers, and one of the first things you learn is to play by the rules.

My first project at GameTek was entering the database for the first video-game version of Jeopardy! I’d actually been a contestant on the show a few years earlier, so I knew correct spelling didn’t matter. Working with the programmer, we had to make sure the game accepted right answers even when players misspelled them.

When I finished that database, I had to test the game to make sure everything worked properly, and communicate errors back to the programmer. Then I had to write the instructions for consumers.

The game was teaching me at every step.

I play a lot of casual games myself, and the best ones are those that teach you the rules as you play, rather than requiring you to read a whole instruction manual before your first keystroke.

Every mystery novel is secretly teaching the reader how to solve itself. Readers might think mysteries are about hiding clues. But they’re actually about teaching readers what kinds of clues matter. That lesson shaped the way I wrote Dog of Secrets, the golden retriever mystery debuting at the end of this month.

Daniel Farahani is twenty. He’s recently immigrated to the United States. Although he speaks perfect English, bureaucracy has delayed his entry into college. While he waits, he disappears into a survival game I invented called Disasteroid.

An asteroid has obliterated big parts of Earth, and characters in the game must learn to survive. It seemed like a fitting metaphor for a young man whose life has been overturned, first by immigration and then by the murder of his parents.

Daniel has to learn to collect things to help him survive while avoiding other players who want to kill him or steal from him. These skills turn out to be very relevant when Steve Levitan and Rochester come into his life after his parents are killed.

Steve helps Daniel take the skills he’s learned in the game and apply them to gathering information about his father, and what caused his parents’ deaths. But Steve is a semi-reformed hacker, and he’s determined to steer Daniel away from that path.

One of the metaphors in the book is “protect the perimeter.” As Daniel learns more about his father, that perimeter keeps expanding, and Steve has to be sure he doesn’t step beyond it—into the kind of hacking that could derail the Federal investigation, or send Daniel to prison.

The lessons are useful for mystery readers as well. Collect information, watch out for the villains, use your assets (like your golden retriever’s instincts and nose for trouble) to reach your goal.

I worked on foreign-language versions of American games, crossword creators, children’s games like Firehouse Rescue, and licensed sports titles like Harlem Globetrotters Basketball. I learned that a good game teaches you through failure. You lose. You try again.

Eventually you stop asking “What happened?” and start asking “What did I miss?”

This is storytelling.

One of Disasteroid’s rules is simple: You don’t win. You outlast.

I think that’s true of life, too.

Whether you’re rebuilding after an asteroid strike, recovering from grief, or simply trying to write your next chapter, sometimes survival comes before victory.

That’s true of good mysteries, too. The detective doesn’t succeed because he’s stronger than the villain. He succeeds because he keeps learning.

Maybe that’s the lesson games have been teaching us all along.

Behind the scenes, I’m hard at work preparing Dog of Secrets for its July 26 pre-launch. I’m creating maps of Stewart’s Crossing, character guides, and an exclusive short story that early readers will receive. I’ll be sharing more about that in the weeks ahead.

With love and gratitude,

Neil

I uploaded the description for my next golden retriever mystery, Dog of Secrets.

Oops. You need to read at a 10th grade level to understand it. That’ll have to change.

Then I uploaded the first page of the book, and whew! Only need a 6th grade level for that.

It’s not that I want to underestimate my readers. I just don’t want you to need a PhD in literature to understand me.

A good way to look at this is the difference between complimentary and free. Both words mean the same thing. If a hotel offers complimentary breakfast, it means the meal is free. If an author offers a complimentary short story, it means readers don’t have to pay for it.

But nobody talks that way. Nobody tells a friend, “I got a complimentary cup of coffee this morning.”

The Words We Learned First

English is unusual because it has two large vocabularies living side by side.

The Latinate words aren’t wrong. In some situations they’re exactly right. But when you’re trying to connect with another human being, the shorter, older words often win. They feel more direct. More emotional. More real.

Why This Matters to Creatives

Writers sometimes use big words because we’re trying to sound professional. Business owners want to sound sophisticated. Marketers think bigger words sound more impressive.

But customers aren’t impressed by effort. They’re persuaded by clarity.

If you’re writing a book description, a website headline, a newsletter signup page, or even an Amazon ad, ask yourself: Can I replace a formal word with one people actually use?

Whether you’re selling books, consulting services, handmade crafts, software, or dog treats, your customers don’t want to read a corporate memo.

They want to hear from a human being.

And speaking of free, I put my 2025 MM romance, The Big Race, up for free for five days (ending today, June 29.) I’ve given away 485 copies so far, and popped up on several Amazon free charts.

The Big Race free at Amazon

Why give the book away? First, I love Ray and Jeffrey’s story and I want people to read it. Second, I hope that if a reader likes it, they’ll give it a good review, which helps boost popularity and sales. And third, if they like the way I write, I hope they’ll buy some of my other books.

And it’s nice to give people things!

With love and gratitude,

Neil

Since many of you enjoy Steve and Rochester’s adventures anyway, I’m going to keep sharing these Insider posts here for the next few weeks. If you’ve ever wondered what was happening behind the scenes of Dog of Secrets, you’re in the right place.

I made so many changes to this book that I wanted my human editor to take another look. He works with several other authors, so I had to fit into his schedule. I hope to get the revised book back from him by the end of the week. I’ll take one more look and by next Monday I’ll have a publication date for you.

The extra work has been worth it—I keep learning how to write stronger books that will make you even more invested in Steve and Rochester. (Let’s be honest: mostly Rochester.)

One of the things I’ve been thinking about while revising Dog of Secrets is how much Rochester’s personality comes through in photographs. Lili is the professional photographer in the series, so I asked what advice she’d give to readers who want better pictures of their own dogs.

Lili's Dog Photography Tips

When I was in graduate school at NYU studying photography, my goal was to become an investigative photojournalist. And I did that for a dozen years, traveling to war zones and world capitals, taking photographs to tell a story.

Then I ended up as the chair of the Fine Arts department at Eastern College, teaching students what I had learned. But nothing prepared me for trying to get good photographs of our golden retriever, Rochester.

Goldens can be very photogenic. They’re really gorgeous dogs, but Rochester has his own ideas. Here are some tips I’ve figured out for getting the best pictures of him.

The Pet Selfie Stick

One gadget I wish I’d known about years ago is the pet selfie stick.

No, it doesn’t help your dog take selfies.

Most of them are simple clips that attach to the top of your phone or camera. You put a small treat, tennis ball, squeaky toy, or other irresistible object in the clip. Since the treat is directly above the lens, your dog naturally looks toward the camera instead of at a squirrel, another dog, or something much more interesting happening behind you.

The first time I tried one with Rochester, he stared at the treat with laser-like concentration. I got several photographs with both ears up, eyes focused, and that alert expression every dog owner hopes to capture.

Of course, Rochester quickly figured out the game. After a few minutes he stopped looking at the camera and started looking at me, clearly wondering why I wasn’t handing over the treat.

Use Natural Light Whenever Possible

Professional photographers spend a lot of time creating beautiful light. Dog owners get it for free.

The best photographs of Rochester are usually taken outdoors in the hour after sunrise or the hour before sunset. Photographers call this the golden hour, which seems especially appropriate for a golden retriever. The light is softer, warmer, and more flattering than the harsh overhead sun we get in the middle of the day.

If you’re photographing indoors, move closer to a window. Turn off the flash if you can. A flash may startle your dog and often creates unnatural-looking reflections in their eyes.

Get Down to Your Dog’s Eye Level

One of the biggest mistakes people make is photographing their dogs from above.

Stand over a dog with a camera and you’ll get a picture of the top of its head.

Get down on the floor and suddenly you’re seeing the world from your dog’s perspective. The photograph becomes more personal and engaging.

I’ve spent a surprising amount of time lying on the floor for Rochester.

Include the People They Love

Some of my favorite photographs aren’t technically perfect. They’re pictures of Rochester with Steve.

A dog’s relationship with its person is often the most important story in the frame. Ask someone to photograph the two of you together. Go for a walk. Sit on the porch. Throw a tennis ball. Don’t worry too much about posing.

The affection is what people notice.

If all else fails, remember that golden retrievers are naturally photogenic.

At least that’s what I tell myself while trying to get Rochester to sit still for three seconds.

Do you have a favorite photograph of your dog? Hit reply and send it to me. I’d love to see the dogs who share your homes—and who knows, one of them might inspire a future Stewart’s Crossing character.

With love and gratitude,

Neil

Did you know that your golden’s nose is a biological supercomputer? Dogs can detect scents at levels humans can barely imagine. Brody is fourteen now, and his hearing isn’t great. (Although maybe he’s just ignoring us when we call him.) But as soon as I open the container of hard-boiled eggs for his breakfast, he perks right up.

Back in 2010, I introduced a golden retriever named Rochester and a semi-reformed hacker named Steve Levitan. My own golden, Samwise, was 10 years old, and a source of constant amusement and love, and I wanted to share him with the world. At the time, most cozy mysteries featured female sleuths, and my agent did not believe that readers would embrace a male protagonist and his golden retriever. He even suggested I make Steve gay, because I already had a following in gay mystery.

But there was this new thing called the Kindle, and I learned that authors were using it to bypass traditional publishing and reach readers directly. I hired an editor to help me revise it and created my own book cover using Photoshop.

I was teaching a course on self-publishing through Broward College a few months later, and I showed the class my KDP dashboard as part of my introduction. I came back to that dashboard at the end of the presentation, and someone in the class said, “Wait. You sold two books while we were here in class?”

That showed me the power of self-publishing. Looking back from 2026, it’s easy to forget how unusual Steve was. A male amateur sleuth who wasn’t a cop, PI, reporter, priest, lawyer, or retired detective—and whose sidekick was a golden retriever—really did stand out in the cozy marketplace. That’s probably why readers remembered him.

I didn’t know then that readers would still be following their adventures all these years later.

As I’ve been preparing the special edition of Dog of Secrets, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Stewart’s Crossing. Not just the mysteries, but the town itself. The Chocolate Ear Café. Main Street. Friar Lake. The police station where Rick Stemper is perpetually overworked. The paths Rochester has walked thousands of times in search of squirrels, clues, and occasional snacks.

One of the bonuses I’m putting together for the special edition is a Guide to Stewart’s Crossing, along with a town map showing many of the places that have appeared throughout the series. It’s been a surprising amount of fun revisiting locations and characters that have become almost as familiar to me as my own neighborhood.

I’m always interested in bringing in societal issues to these mysteries, and one that concerns me these days is the epidemic of young men without direction. Many become incels, involuntary celibates who blame successful women for their troubles. (See The Virgin Homicides in the Mahu series for an example.)

Others get caught up in video games, like Alexei Krimsky in All Dog’s Children, golden mystery #15). In Dog of Secrets, Daniel Farahani moves to the United States with his parents after graduating high school overseas, and doesn’t have any roots in the community yet—just his online gaming friends around the world.

This may be the 23rd Golden Retriever Mystery, but at its heart it’s a story about a young man who suddenly finds himself alone, trying to understand the secrets his parents left behind. Steve and Rochester step in to help, only to discover that a fatal car crash was actually murder.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing more about the special edition, including some of the bonus materials I’ve created for longtime readers.

And yes, Rochester still believes every day holds the possibility of glory.

In the meantime, if you could, Please follow me on Amazon at my author page: (when you get there, just click the follow button.)

Follow me on Amazon

With love and gratitude,

Neil

As soon as Rochester found the pouch in Amir Farahani’s desk drawer, I knew we were looking at something unusual.

At first glance, it looked like an oversized wallet made of black woven material. Rochester nosed it out of the drawer and dropped it at my feet. When I picked it up, I felt something solid inside.

A cell phone.

Now, finding a second phone is enough to get anyone’s attention. Most people don’t keep an extra phone hidden in a desk drawer. But it was the pouch that really bothered me.

I’d heard of Faraday pouches before. They block electronic signals, which means a phone inside can’t send or receive calls, texts, GPS signals, or internet connections. I’d never actually seen one in person. Most people have no reason to own one.

So why did Amir?

The more I learned about Amir Farahani, the more I realized how little anyone had known about him. He’d been a successful businessman, a devoted husband, and a loving father. That’s the man his family, and the members of the mosque thought they knew.

But a hidden phone tucked inside a Faraday pouch suggested there might be another side to his life.

By itself, the pouch didn’t prove anything. Neither did the second phone. But detectives and mystery writers have something in common. We pay attention to details that don’t quite fit.

And this definitely didn’t fit.

What was Amir hiding? Who was he communicating with? And why did he need a phone that no one else knew existed?

Rochester couldn’t answer those questions.

But he had found the clue that led us to ask them.

This is the first of the Stewart’s Crossing Insiders. Hope you found it intriguing! I’m working on the edits for Dog of Secrets and it’s taking somewhat longer than expected, but I’m aiming for a July release.

With love and gratitude,

Neil (and Steve)

There were three that jumped out at me, that expressed something that I find in my own work, and that I think other writers can benefit from. And if you’re the kind of reader I am, I think you’ll enjoy noting these in books, even if they aren’t labeled that way.

Karuna means compassion. You’ll find a lot of compassion in my books, particularly in the feelings Steve has for victims and their survivors. Lili calls him a white knight, and karuna is part of what drives him to solve crimes. In the upcoming Dog of Secrets, he recognizes that twenty-year-old Daniel Farahani doesn’t know what to do with his grief, and comforts him while helping him investigate his parents’ death.

The Smiling Dog Café books are full of karuna—the compassion that Betty shows in helping others heal from their own troubles. And that’s part of the whole ethos of the café, that people care for each other.

I wrote about philia, the shared mission that bonds Steve and Rick in a Hardy Boys kind of fellowship as they work together toward a common goal, solving the crime.

Maitri is a Sanskrit word that means goodwill and kindness without a common purpose. It’s just being nice to your fellow man. I’ve been trying to practice Maitri in my own life without knowing it. When a friend complained about a bad driver who cut her off, I said, “Imagine that driver is rushing his sick dog to the emergency vet. Wouldn’t you cut him a break for that?”

Rabbi Hillel was asked to define Judaism while standing on one foot. His response was, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. The rest is commentary; go and learn.” Nice to see that this emotion goes back so far in history, and wouldn’t it be great if we could all practice a little more Maitri in our daily lives?

Mudita is finding joy in the happiness of others. It’s the opposite of schadenfreude, which is a much more common expression. As a college professor, I was required to attend one graduation ceremony each year, which was a great example of Mudita.

Some of those students had struggled academically. Some were balancing jobs and families. Some were the first in their family to earn a degree. Watching them cross the stage to the cheers and glowing smiles of their family and friends was a reminder that success is rarely a solo accomplishment, and how much joy there is to be found in the success of others.

Kritajnata is my gratitude for having had the opportunity to participate in their journey. I think this is what Steve feels at the end of an investigation, or what Betty feels as a story in the Smiling Dog Café comes to a resolution. Grateful for the opportunity to serve. While Mudita is the joy of seeing someone else succeed, Kritajnata is the gratitude that comes from having been allowed to play a small part in that success.

Steve rarely seeks recognition for solving a case. He’s happier seeing Rick get credit for a job well done, knowing he helped in some small way.

I’m always doing this kind of research as I write, and I love the chance to present what I’ve learned in this newsletter, and in my books.

Faraday pouch for phone and flash drive

While working on Dog of Secrets, I discovered a fascinating piece of technology called a Faraday pouch. In this week’s Stewart’s Crossing Insiders post, Steve Levitan explains why Rochester’s discovery of one hidden in Amir Farahani’s desk drawer immediately changed the investigation.

Why would an ordinary businessman need a phone that couldn’t be tracked, called, or remotely accessed?

Insiders will get the full story later this week, as a note from Steve.

Become an Insider - free!

In a recent People magazine interview, singer Amy Grant said, “I always think, you could have done a lot of things with your expendable income and with your time, but you have found yourself here.” I agree!

With love and gratitude,

Neil

When Daniel Farahani loses both parents in a suspicious crash, he's left with grief, unanswered questions, and the growing suspicion that his father had been keeping secrets.

As Steve and Rochester help him search for the truth, Daniel's talent for computers threatens to pull him into dangerous territory. Dog of Secrets explores family, identity, and the fine line between finding answers and becoming obsessed with the search.

Over the next four weeks, Steve, Lili, Rick and others will provide some insider tips on life in Stewart’s Crossing, designed for my most faithful readers. To join this short-term mailing list (only until the book releases).

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The Greeks understood that even love can become distorted. Their word mania describes obsessive love—the kind that becomes possessive, controlling, or destructive. In some stories, the object of that obsession isn’t another person at all. It’s money, power, or status. As the Bible warns, it’s not money itself that’s dangerous, but the love of money—the point at which desire becomes obsession.

Maybe it’s hatred, or greed, or something similar. Some authors write about characters who thrive under pressure; I often write about ones who crack.

I often find that the characters in my books who kill are under the grip of some kind of mania. It’s no coincidence that the English word maniac comes from the same Greek root.

One of the things that makes mania compelling in fiction is that it often begins with something readers recognize. We’ve all experienced infatuation, longing, jealousy, or the fear of losing someone. Mania takes those emotions and pushes them beyond healthy limits

For writers, mania often works best when the villain’s motivation isn’t power for its own sake but a warped form of love. The villain may genuinely believe they’re helping, protecting, rescuing, preserving, or honoring someone. Their tragedy—and their danger—is that they cannot recognize the other person’s autonomy.

A useful contrast is that healthy love asks, “What do you need?”

Mania asks, “How can I keep you?”

That distinction can create powerful conflict in almost any genre, from romance and mystery to thrillers and literary fiction.

But not every form of love leads us into darkness. Another Greek term I didn’t get to last week is ludus, or playful love. If mania represents love at its most destructive, ludus represents almost the opposite.

Ludus is the joy of interaction, teasing, games, laughter, shared adventures, and simply enjoying each other’s company. It’s the butterflies of flirtation in romance, but it can also exist in friendships, families, and even human-animal relationships.

Unlike eros, which is driven by passion, or mania, which is driven by obsession, ludus is driven by delight. That’s the kind of love that Steve and Rochester share.

Steve loves his dog, certainly, but much of that love isn’t dramatic or sacrificial. It’s playful. Rochester steals food. Steve talks to him as if he’s a partner in the investigation. Rochester gets distracted by squirrels, children, and tennis balls at inconvenient moments. Their relationship is built as much on shared enjoyment as on loyalty.

What makes dogs such powerful companions, I think, is that they invite us into ludus. They remind us to play.

My editor has remarked several times in the past on my ability to write convincing relationships between men—not just romantic ones, but friends and even colleagues. I think that’s because I bring ludus there. Rick teases Steve about being the junior member of their Hardy Boys team. Aidan and Liam banter while figuring out how to protect their clients. Those moments aren’t just comic relief. They’re expressions of ludus—the playful affection that helps relationships feel real.

The third concept is xenia—hospitality, the sacred duty of welcoming strangers. In the ancient Greek world, offering food, shelter, and protection to a traveler wasn’t merely good manners. It was a moral obligation.

As a writer, I find that fascinating because so many stories begin with an act of welcome. A character arrives lost, frightened, grieving, or alone, and someone opens a door. Sometimes that act of hospitality changes a life. Sometimes it launches an adventure. Sometimes it becomes the first step toward solving a mystery.

In my next golden retriever mystery, out in late June, a young man’s parents are killed, and Steve extends his help in figuring out why.

The Chocolate Ear Café is built around xenia. So is the Smiling Dog Café. People come through the door carrying burdens they can no longer manage by themselves, and they find coffee, conversation, and a place where they belong. In a sense, the cafés themselves are expressions of xenia.

The Smiling Dog Cafe books are now in Spanish, French and German

Looking at these Greek words, I’m struck by how many forms love can take. It can become obsession, with all the danger that brings. It can appear as playfulness and shared joy. It can be as simple as opening a door and making someone feel welcome.

As writers, we spend a lot of time talking about love stories. Perhaps the Greeks understood that every story is a love story of some kind—we just have to figure out which kind.

With love (in many forms!) and gratitude,

Neil

Ruth is read during Shavuot, the Jewish holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai—a festival of learning, community, and shared tradition. I’m interested in the way that Ruth is a story of grief, loyalty, and unexpected healing.

It begins in loss. Naomi has lost her husband and sons. Ruth, her daughter-in-law, faces an uncertain future. One of the central themes of Ruth is loyalty—Ruth’s famous declaration: “Where you go, I will go…” If you live with a golden retriever, you may recognize this as the official breed motto.

Ruth makes an active, radical choice: not just to stay with Naomi, but to join a new people and build a new future. Many romance novels—including the queer romances I write—explore similar emotional territory—choosing love, choosing belonging, choosing the life that feels true.

Unlike many biblical stories centered on dramatic miracles, Ruth is strikingly human in scale. It’s about kindness, community, and choosing connection when it would be easier to give up. Sounds a lot like my healing fiction, doesn’t it?

Speaking of stories about connection and second chances, I’ve got some audiobook news. Audible has finally released some new audio versions of my books, including my collaboration with Joanna Campbell Slan, Death Under the Dogwoods, a spring golden retriever mystery.

The latest three Smiling Dog Café books are also available at Audible:

· The Bridge Between Us

· Hope and Grace

· Drift and Return

These use Audible’s Virtual Voice technology, based on licensed voice work from professional narrator Steve Stewart. The narration is AI-generated from the book text using his voice model, then reviewed for quality before release. This is a compromise, giving some work to voice over artists, while keeping the cost of production low.

Most of my audiobooks are also available elsewhere, at much cheaper prices than Audible charges, and I make more royalties. Chirpbooks is a great option.

I hope you’re enjoying the Memorial Day holiday and perhaps getting some reading in. I’ve got books going on my iPad, my Kindle, and in print on my nightstand. By the way, there are 12 ratings for Drift and Return on Amazon, mostly four and five star. I’m still waiting for the first actual review!

If you’ve read Drift and Return and enjoyed it, I’d be deeply grateful if you’d leave a quick review. Early reviews make a real difference.

If you’re inclined, here’s the direct link for a review at Amazon.

Review Drift & Return

On this Memorial Day, I remember the joy of watching the parade down Main Street in Yardley when I was a wide-eyed kid, all the VFW members and volunteer fire fighters, the antique cars and the flags and the marching bands, all celebrating American values. Can’t have too much of that.

With love and gratitude,

Neil

I recently listened to a podcast about how authors can use the different kinds of love identified by the ancient Greeks to deepen readers’ emotional engagement with a story.

Podcast Transcript

Let’s start with agape (ah-GAH-pay), which podcaster Thomas Umstattd defined as “selfless charity that gives without demanding anything in return.” If you’re a mystery reader, you probably recognize this in a detective’s drive for justice, often at personal cost. In my Golden Retriever Mysteries, Steve Levitan has repeatedly put himself in danger—through hacking, confronting villains, and other risky choices—to protect his community. That’s agape in action.

Most people are familiar with eros, the fire of romantic passion. In my cozy mysteries, that tends to stay understated, but you’ll find it more openly in my gay fiction: Kimo and Mike in the Mahu series, bodyguards Aidan and Liam, Angus Green and Lester, and even my 1960s private eye George Clay. (And of course, my MM romances lean into eros much more directly.)

Philia is the bond of friendship forged through shared purpose—the “shoulder-to-shoulder” love of people on a mission together. Steve and Rick embody this in the Golden Retriever Mysteries, united not only by friendship but by their determination to solve crimes. You’ll also see philia throughout my bodyguard stories, police procedurals, and FBI thrillers.

Pragma is enduring, practical, committed love—the kind built over time and shown in everyday acts of care. Steve and Lili share this, as do Kimo and Mike, and Aidan and Liam. It’s the kind of love I see when my husband quietly cleans my CPAP machine for me without being asked.

And then there’s storge, the affectionate love between parent and child—or, I’d argue, between a person and a beloved dog. Steve and Rochester absolutely share this. Rochester’s unconditional devotion, and Steve’s daily rituals of brushing, walking, and caring for him, are all expressions of storge.

What fascinates me is how the richest stories often combine several of these kinds of love at once. There are examples of these principles in a lot of popular art. Storge in The Sheep Detectives, for example, and philia and agape in The Hail Mary Project. Or healing fiction, where family affection, companionship, and hope are often central to the emotional experience.

It’s something I want to be more intentional about in my own writing. When Dog of Secrets, the next Golden Retriever Mystery, comes back from my editor, I’ll be looking for ways to strengthen Steve’s friendship with Rick, his love for Lili, his bond with Rochester, and his commitment to restoring safety to the community.

Do you notice these emotional currents in the books you read—or the shows and movies you watch? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Speaking of stories about healing and connection, my friend Kris Bock has just released a book that may appeal to many of you. The Magical Cat Café and Teashop is a cozy novel about finding family, healing, and home. If you enjoyed heart-forward books like Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, or even my Smiling Dog Café series, you may want to check it out.

Order the Magical Cat Cafe at Amazon

And one small personal request: Drift and Return is now out in the world, but it doesn’t have any reader reviews yet. If you’ve read it and enjoyed it, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave a short review. Even a few sentences make a huge difference in helping other readers discover the book. I’ve been using the COPS framework myself lately when writing reviews: character, overview, plot and summary. That helps me figure out what I’d like to say, and what I think would be useful for other readers.

Enter your review at Amazon

With love and gratitude,
Neil

That’s the heart of Drift and Return, my new two-novella Smiling Dog Café collection, which officially releases today.

This is the fourth book in my Smiling Dog Café series, stories about people finding healing, connection, and sometimes unexpected second chances—with a little help from some very intuitive dogs.

If you’ve visited the café before, you’ll find familiar warmth waiting for you.

If you’re new, the door is open.

In Drift and Return, two very different people find themselves at crossroads.

Olympic medalist Tom Whitehead, in The Master of the Luge, has spent his life chasing a dream that’s now over.

Margaret Reed, in The Weight of Silence, built a career in intelligence that left little room for lasting human connection beyond the dogs she trusted.

Both need a reset—as so many of us do.

Buy at Amazon

When the Covid pandemic ended, I had a choice. I could return to full-time teaching for two more years before compulsory retirement, or I could pivot to writing full time. It took me time, coffee, and the affection of my dogs to make the transition to sitting at a keyboard all day work. I missed (and still do) the camaraderie of colleagues and the stimulation of the classroom.

But as my life changed, I thought of others who needed the kind of direction I found inside myself. I wrote this book for readers who love stories about hope, rebuilding, and the quiet ways lives can change.

If that sounds like the kind of book you could use, Drift and Return is available now at Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited. The paperback is also available and can be ordered from your favorite retailer or independent bookstore.

Writing about people finding their way back to connection has made me think a lot about the communities that help us do that — at every age.

As I’ve been promoting After the Party, my book for Jewish teens post B’nai mitzvah, I discovered Sasha Lights the Way, created by a young mother to help parents raise proud Jewish kids through free printable coloring books and cultural activities. It’s a small, generous project doing something quietly important: giving families a way to pass on meaning and identity to their youngest children. If that sounds like something your family or community could use, the door there is open too.

If you read Drift and Return this week, an early review would mean a tremendous amount. Those first reviews really do help readers discover a new book.

I’d love to hear from you: What’s your version of a reset?

Is it a place? A ritual? A walk with a dog? A favorite comfort read?

Hit reply and tell me.

With love and gratitude,

Neil

P.S. If you know someone who could use a hopeful story right now, I’d be grateful if you shared this email with them.

A pause. A breath that won’t settle. A sense that something in your life has drifted just slightly off course.

And then—something small interrupts.

In The Smiling Dog Café, that interruption might be a memory. Or a cup of coffee. Or a dog who seems to know exactly when to find you.

Is that magic? The kind with rules and consequences… or the kind that simply arrives when it’s needed?

Hard magic is a system with clear rules, limits, and often costs. The reader can understand how it works. I love many books that have hard magic systems, like the Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher or the Hollows series featuring Rachel Morgan, by Kim Harrison.

Soft magic is felt more than explained. It shapes the world, but doesn’t follow clearly stated rules. My favorites include Travis Baldree and JRR Tolkien. We know that magic exists in that world, but we don’t always know the rules or the costs of using it.

Then there’s magical realism, as you’d find in Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s an ordinary world with some kind of magic working, but it’s never spelled out.

That’s where you’ll find The Smiling Dog Café. No elves or orcs. Betty’s not a witch, she just serves really good coffee. And unlike in Before the Coffee Gets Cold, you can sit anywhere you want and take as long as you like drinking.

The café doesn’t advertise itself as anything unusual. People come in for coffee, for a moment of quiet, for a break in their day. But somehow, the right conversations happen there. The right memories surface. The right connections are made.

And the dogs… well. They seem to know who needs them.

No one explains how.

What matters is what happens next.

On May 11, the next step in that journey arrives with Drift and Return, the fourth book in the Smiling Dog Café series.

If you’re drawn to stories where healing doesn’t come all at once… where small moments build into something meaningful… where a place can change you without ever announcing how—

I think you’ll feel at home there.

Here’s a passage from the first novella, The Master of the Luge, trimmed to fit a newsletter constraint. It’s about an Olympic athlete who has lost himself without the rigors and routine of practice and the goal of a podium.

Halfway down the block, something inside Tom Whitehead buckled—his breath thinning, his chest tightening the way it had seconds before a race, only without the clarity that usually followed.

He stepped into a narrow alley and leaned his forehead against cold brick, trying the steadying breaths he’d used at the start ramp. Today, they barely made a dent.

He catalogued the symptoms automatically—elevated heart rate, narrowing vision, no physical trigger.

Not injury. Not illness. Just drift.

A soft whine broke through the fog.

Tom stilled. He closed his eyes, listening. The sound dissolved into the rush of blood in his ears, the distant grind of traffic. Nothing distinct.

Tom looked up. A golden retriever stood at the end of the alley, head tilted, eyes warm and intent. No collar. No leash. Just a gentle confidence.

Tom straightened without meaning to, his breath catching halfway in. The tightness in his chest shifted—not gone, but different, as if something had reached through the noise and taken hold.

The golden dipped into a play bow, then padded away a few steps and looked back at him. An unmistakable invitation.

“I guess you want me to follow you?” Tom said.

The tail gave a single confident sweep.

Fine. He’d walk a block. See where it went. It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be.

The air changed subtly as they walked: warmer, scented with coffee and something sweet. The industrial chill lifted. The dog turned onto a narrow side street where a soft glow spilled across the cracked sidewalk.

A weathered hand-painted sign read The Smiling Dog Café.

You can preorder Drift and Return now, and step back into the café when the doors open on May 11.

https://amzn.to/4eWf5zF

If you like cozy mysteries with pets, I’m part of a promo this month, and it’s fun just to look at all the adorable dogs on the book covers. If you don’t have a copy of Rochester’s Puppyhood, the golden retriever prequel, you can get it free here:

https://books.bookfunnel.com/cozypetsmay2026/odp3qj25lu

With love and gratitude,

Neil

In a New York Times article, Alexandra Alter wrote about a quiet literary phenomenon in Japan: a series of novels set in a small Tokyo café where customers could travel back in time—briefly, and under very particular rules. The first book was Before the Coffee Gets Cold, and like many readers, I was intrigued by the premise.

What I didn’t expect was how it would feel.

These weren’t stories driven by suspense or high-stakes twists. Instead, each chapter unfolded like a gentle conversation—someone returning to say what had been left unsaid, to find closure, or simply to understand a moment that had shaped their life. The café itself became more than a setting. It was a “third space”: not home, not work, but a place in between, where transformation can quietly happen.

That idea landed with me because I was burned out on cozy mysteries. After reading eighty cozies as a judge for an MWA award, I found myself dreading the familiar turn when something awful happens to force the story toward its climax. I was tired of bracing for pain. I wanted to read—and write—something gentler.

As I explored further into Japanese and Korean novels with a similar feel, I began to notice a pattern: a contained setting, a touch of the fantastical that never overwhelmed the human story, and a quiet belief that, given the right moment, people can begin to heal.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I wanted to try writing something like this myself. Not as a departure from my Golden Retriever Mysteries, but as an extension of them—an offshoot that leaned less on solving crimes and more on understanding the people who walked through the door.

Only in my world, the guides wouldn’t be cats.

They would be dogs.

As I looked more closely at these books, I also became aware of something else. Their emotional power is deeply rooted in their cultural specificity—the food, the rhythms of daily life, even the names. While that richness is part of what makes them so compelling, it also created a slight distance for me as a reader, a sense that I was observing rather than fully inhabiting the world.

That realization helped clarify what I wanted to do differently.

If I was going to create a third space of my own—a place where people could come to heal, guided by something just beyond the ordinary—I wanted to ground it in a setting my readers could move through without friction.

For me, that place was Brooklyn. When I worked for the Rouse Company at South Street Seaport, our office was a barge moored near the bridge and we could look across the East River at the neighborhoods there. Each had its own rhythm, its own sense of community, and that helped shape the world of the Smiling Dog Café.

That’s the Pier 17 pavilion at the left; our barge was just beyond it, in the shadow of the bridge.

At the same time, I found echoes of this quieter, character-driven approach in American fiction. I was especially taken with Remarkably Bright Creatures, which creates deep emotional connection without relying on a defined third space or a touch of magic. Its healing comes through character and voice, through the slow unfolding of relationships.

That contrast helped me see more clearly what I wanted to build.

A café rooted in a real neighborhood. Characters grounded in everyday life. And just enough of the unexplained—something in the way the dogs move through the room, the way they choose who to sit beside—to suggest that healing might come from places we don’t entirely understand.

What began as a reading journey became something more: a way of thinking about the kinds of stories I wanted to tell.

Stories where people arrive carrying something heavy. Where a place—a café, a corner of a neighborhood, a familiar table—offers them a moment to pause. Where connection happens quietly, sometimes with words, sometimes without. And where change comes not all at once, but in small, meaningful shifts.

That journey eventually led me to write The Smiling Dog Café, where Betty and her café first came to life for me. It was there I began to understand how a place, and the people and dogs within it, could quietly change the course of someone’s life.

In Drift and Return, the fourth book in the series, I return to that world through two interconnected novellas: one about a former Olympic athlete finding his way after everything he planned has ended, and another about a woman learning how to release what she’s carried for years. Their stories are part of the same ongoing conversation.

The door is open. The coffee’s brewing. And if you listen closely, you might hear the soft thump of a tail against the floor, as one of the dogs decides exactly where it’s needed next.

Drift and Return releases on May 11 at Amazon, and is available for pre-order now.

Drift and Return at Amazon

With love and gratitude,

Neil

This is where poets excel. They consider every word, toying with the precise word to describe the quality of light on the patio in front of me. Lambent? Luminous? Glowing?

You can see I’m not a poet. But some of my best friends are.

I heard Thomas Umstattd use the term vectorized grammar on his podcast, and because I’m a word nerd, I had to look it up.

To a computer intelligence, words exist in relationship to each other. “Dog” tends to show up near “puppy” and “loyal” and “walk,” and nowhere near “spreadsheet” or “tax audit.” Over time, those relationships form a kind of map, so that when the model builds a sentence, it isn’t asking what it means so much as what usually comes next.

Most of the time, AI gets it right. The sentences flow, nothing jars, and on a first read everything feels polished and complete. But if you sit with it for a moment, there’s often that faint sense that you’ve read something very much like this before.

Because, in a way, you have.

The model is designed to land in the middle of the pattern—to reach for the most likely word, the most familiar phrasing, the version of the sentence that would look “correct” across millions of examples. It’s very good at that. It just isn’t where the most interesting writing tends to live.

Good writing leans a little off-center. It chooses the sharper verb, or lets a sentence run just long enough to create a different rhythm, or turns in a direction you didn’t quite expect. It isn’t random, but it is intentional in a way that goes beyond pattern-matching.

A simple example makes the distinction clearer. Ask an AI who was president of the United States in 1492, and you may get an answer like Christopher Columbus. Obviously wrong—the country didn’t exist yet—but you can see how it gets there. The model recognizes the shape of the question and supplies a name that fits the pattern, without ever stopping to question the premise.

That same instinct is what makes its writing feel so smooth, and it’s also what makes it feel, at times, a little generic.

Which is where we come in.

I’ve been using AI for things like pitch letters, and it’s very good at producing something clean and confident and structurally sound. It’s also very good at sounding slightly more certain than I actually am, which is not always the tone I want. So I go through it line by line, softening here, tightening there, swapping in a phrase that feels more like something I would actually say.

That’s the point where the writing becomes mine again.

And it’s also where the value is, because readers don’t remember what was merely correct. They remember what felt specific, deliberate, and alive.

This weekend, I’ll be attending Malice Domestic, a mystery reader conference in North Bethesda, Maryland. I’ve been assigned to join a panel called “I Am Not a Robot: AI in Writing and Publishing.”

I don’t know exactly where the conversation will go. But I do know this: whatever tools I use, the words that matter are the ones I choose on purpose.

Did you get some value from this newsletter? Buy me a cup of coffee.

RODE describes the gap between what we imagine and what we can actually create. ‎Historically, that gap has been enormous. Writers needed years to develop craft, capital ‎to publish, and access to distribution. Most ideas never made it into the world.‎

AI changes that. Not by replacing creativity, but by acting as a kind of “vision partner,” ‎helping move from idea to execution faster than ever before. Effort drops. Output rises. ‎The gap shrinks.‎

But here’s the part that matters:

That gap is no longer the problem.‎

Execution is easier than it’s ever been. Which means the real bottleneck has shifted—from ‎creating work to getting attention for it.‎

I’ve seen this firsthand in my own publishing business. Recently, I updated the ‎descriptions, keywords, categories, and back matter across all sixteen books in my Mahu ‎series after reviewing market data from K-lytics. Their latest Mystery-Thriller-Suspense ‎report showed strong growth in police procedurals, which pushed me to reposition the ‎series more clearly in that direction.‎

At the same time, I moved the books back into Kindle Unlimited to take advantage of ‎binge readers and page-read income, and created a new reader magnet—a prequel story ‎set during Kimo’s surfing days on the North Shore.‎

The result: over 150 copies of the magnet sold (in addition to newsletter giveaways), ‎along with a noticeable lift in sales and KU page reads across the series—especially in the ‎later books.‎

That’s not an AI story. That’s a positioning story.‎

Where AI does come in is speed and control. For my recent release Driven Together, I ‎created a full set of promotional images—race cars, tracks, character visuals—without ‎outsourcing. Instead of hiring a designer, waiting weeks, and going through multiple ‎rounds of revision, I was able to generate, refine, and iterate in hours while staying in ‎full creative control.‎

That’s the real leverage.‎

AI doesn’t just help you create more. It helps you move faster, test more ideas, and stay ‎closer to your own vision without friction.‎

But because of that, everyone now has access to the same baseline tools. Covers, blurbs, ‎ads, even prose—good enough is everywhere.‎

So the advantage is no longer in producing the work.‎

It’s in knowing what to produce, how to position it, and how to get it in front of the right ‎readers.‎

In RODE terms, the gap between dream and execution has largely collapsed.‎

The new gap—the one that matters—is between execution and attention.‎

That’s where authors and entrepreneurs need to focus now.‎

This shift—from production to attention—is exactly what I’ve been exploring in my recent presentation on advanced AI for book marketing. The response has been eye-opening, because most authors are still focused on using these tools to create faster, not to position smarter. That’s where the real opportunity is now.

If you run a writing group or author organization and want me to bring that presentation to your members, feel free to reach out.

With love and gratitude,

Neil

When I was in college, I had a revelation in economics class that has colored my whole life. The way to wealth is the ownership of productive assets.

That one sentence led me to business school, and convinced me to major in real estate. I had visions of owning shopping centers that would provide me with the income to indulge in writing.

That path didn’t quite work out, but the concept remained, except instead of strip malls, I saw books as my productive assets.

The first mall I worked on, in Albany, New York.

Recently, I read an article about entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant, who explained that wealth creation isn’t really about working harder — it’s about applying the right kind of leverage.

He breaks leverage down into four types: people, money, code, and content.

In my case, it’s media: books, audiobooks, and the content that supports them—newsletters, posts, ads, and promotions.

I joking consider all my books as my staff members. They are out there earning revenue for me while I’m writing, reading, taking care of Brody and Griffin (thanks for the 6 AM wake-up barks this morning, boys) and doing everything else in my life.

But books don’t earn on their own. Once they’re published, I have to keep putting them in front of readers.

Lately, I’ve been using AI tools as another form of leverage—creating images, sharpening copy, and producing content I couldn’t have made on my own without specialized design or technical skills.

Giving away books is one of the most effective ways I’ve found to build a readership.

From my own time in Kindle Unlimited, I know how this works: I’d try a free book, then binge a series I liked. That’s where the real revenue comes from. Payouts for KU page reads are close to 50% of my income.

But that’s not the leverage. The leverage is this: I write the book once, and it keeps working for me—across formats, across platforms, and over time.

This week I’ll also be live and in person at a book fair sponsored by the Friends of the Miami-Dade Public Library. I’m looking forward to talking about my books and signing and selling them.

I’m part of a “Spicy MM Spring” giveaway. You can get a free copy of my four-book set of MM erotica, Built for Pleasure, there. Many other books that look like fun! For authors, even a free book can generate revenue if it encourages the reader to consume more of my content.

Built for Pleasure

I’ve developed a presentation based on what I’ve learned about advanced uses of AI for marketing books, and I’ll be delivering it tomorrow evening to the members of Sisters in Crime – Treasure Coast Chapter.

If you’d like me to present to your group, drop me an email.

One book at a time, I’m building a body of work that keeps working—long after I’ve finished writing it.

The speaking, the events, the giveaways—that’s how I bring new readers into that system and keep it growing.

With love and gratitude,

Neil