Frank's blog

Critics love to talk about the "death" of the thriller. They say audiences have shorter attention spans than a goldfish on caffeine. They claim if someone doesn’t get shot in the first three pages, the reader is going to close the book and go back to scrolling TikTok. They’re wrong. Dead wrong. The problem isn't that readers don't want depth. The problem is that most modern thrillers are all sugar and no protein. They’re "fast-paced" but hollow. They’ve got the car chases, bu

The Old West is dead. At least, that’s what the history books tell you. By the 1890s, the census declared the frontier "closed." The iron horse was screaming across the plains. Cities were rising. The law was finally catching up with the lawless. But for a writer? That "closure" is a gold mine. If you want to write a character-driven thriller that actually keeps people turning pages past midnight, you don't look at the beginning of the West. You look at the end. The end of th

History books are usually a pile of sanitized crap. They give you the "postcard" version of Yellowstone. Majestic mountains. Friendly rangers. Clean geysers. It's a nice story. It’s also mostly fake. If you want to read or write real frontier adventure novels, you have to dig deeper. You have to look at the dirt, the blood, and the lies. The "Wild West" didn't end because someone drew a border around a park. It just got weirder. My latest book, Hunting Party, is set at the en

Most Westerns are a snooze-fest. You know the ones. Twenty pages of a guy staring at a cactus. Three chapters dedicated to the "majesty" of a sunset. That’s fine if you want a nap. It’s trash if you want a story. Readers today don’t have time for literary filler. They want pulse-pounding, throat-gripping action. They want characters who bleed and a plot that moves like a bullet train. If you want to read: or write: a novel that people actually finish, you need a different pla