He has written for The Guardian of London and for McGraw-Hill s Popular Computing Magazine . He published several short stories in the North American Review and The Smith of New York City. Owens teaches professional writing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where he was Teacher of the Year in 1993. Rips is his first novel. A novel is a sustained writing experience that happens over a couple of years and builds its own daily momentum.
Characters evolve and grow, generating lives of their own.
Short stories for me are a bit like feature articles. While you're working on them, they are very engrossing, and it is satisfying to work at things you can finish in a few weeks. I much prefer writing novels because they offer size and depth. But the time involved is a great professional risk. You can work at a novel for a couple of years and have nothing to show for it.