I’m often asked how I create strong protagonists for my suspense novels. I love answering that question because in the initial stages, my protagonists are anything but strong. When introduced for the first time, Valerie (Dead Witness), Brendell (Broken But Not Dead), and Dakota (Break Time), tortured my beta readers with their blandness. My weakness …Read More
3 Minutes … by G.J. Brown
Bloody Scotland has just finished. It’s Scotland’s International Crime Writing festival set in Stirling; which lies in the heart of Scotland. I’m a founder and board member of the festival. This is the fifth year and it was a record weekend with over 6,500 tickets sold. Some sixty plus authors were involved in forty events …Read More
Court Trouble—Not the Legal Kind … by Mike Befeler
For the last twenty years, I’ve played a sport called platform tennis. As an ex-tennis player with aging joints, I found this an enjoyable sport on a court a third the size of a tennis court. Writers consider everything material for a novel, so I had to set a mystery on a platform tennis court. …Read More
No Such Thing As “I Can’t” … by Amy Rivers
When I was in 2nd grade, I was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, which caused severe visual impairment. Up to that point, I was your typical scrawny urchin. I grew up in the desert of Southern New Mexico and I spent most of my childhood playing in the dirt. But after the diagnosis, many things …Read More
Key Elements in a Writing Contest … by Kathryn Mattingly
I feel honored to be the coordinator for the Northern Colorado Writers Top of the Mountain writing contest associated with the annual conference which will be open to submissions in September. It’s a pleasure working with the wonderful, expert judges and the inspiring entrants who never cease to amaze with their interesting and well-penned manuscripts. …Read More
The Rainbow Connection … by Katherine Valdez
Last April, I entered the gates of Santa Monica High School in California – along with 20,000 teenagers, librarians, teachers, and parents – for YALLWEST, the young adult book festival. The main reason I attended for the second year in a row was because the event featured my favorite author, Rainbow Rowell. She wrote Fangirl, …Read More
It Takes a Team … by Nancy L. Reed
I never want to be solely responsible for all elements of the writing-to-publication process. Selfishly, I want to concentrate on my writing and leave the rest to folks who understand how to package my words and make them available to readers. Admittedly, I’d like to attain some modicum of success as a published author, but …Read More
Learning e-format Publication … by Rex Burns
One of the most pervasive beliefs in American publishers has been that readers will not be interested in humorous novels or in novels about Latin America. So I wrote The Better Part of Valour, a comic novel set in Columbia. Again and again, American publishers turned it down; in fact, few if any of them …Read More
CRIME & CRIMINALITY: The Amateur Sleuth in Regency England … by Darcie Wilde
Ah! The English Regency. The romance! The dances! The genteel manners, the snobbery, and the witty banter! And, oh! Those clothes! It’s a lush, intricate and magnificent setting for almost any kind of story. For a crime writer, though, it’s got some interesting pitfalls, and sneaky advantages, especially when you’re writing a mystery with an …Read More
Sudden Change of Plans … by Lisa Black
I came to write That Darkness because I was writing another book and then stopped and wrote this one. Then I went back and wrote the other one. I never said I was efficient. I had been writing along in the Theresa MacLean series, in which Theresa is a single fortyish mother and forensic scientist …Read More