Hello. I'm Tom Bentley, and I've run a writing and editing business out of my house for many years. I've published hundreds of nonfiction freelance pieces, and have finished (I think) a second novel and am agent-hunting. My nonfiction pieces include first-person essays, travel pieces and more journalistic articles; venues include Forbes, Writer's Digest, Wine Enthusiast, Writer's Market, the Los Angeles Times and many more. I've won three Traveler's Tales Solas Awards.
I was the 1999 winner of the National Steinbeck Center's short story contest, and that story is included in my collection, Flowering and Other Stories, which was published by AuthorMike Ink in May of 2012.
My new book, "Think Like a Writer: How to Write the Stories You See" is for those writers and would-be-writers that love language, and how words work to thrill, convince, dazzle, and excite. The book gives you tips and strategies on how to see the world as a writer, and then how to put those sights compellingly on the page.
The book also discusses writing at a structural level: how words work in sentences and how sentences work in stories (and articles), moving to how to use those elements and that writer's stance to write across genres. This is a book to jump-start your writing work--and writing play.
Hope I'm not just blathering on now, but my other interests are reading, bicycling, brain research, basketball, politics, travel, photography, chocolate, whiskey and selected nonsense--I can be a bit of a wise guy. I live in the hinterlands of Watsonville, California, surrounded by strawberry fields and the occasional Airstream. See my lurid website confessions and writing-related blog at http://www.tombentley.com
