Authors are assigned to panels at these conferences and we looked at one another when we met trying to find the commonality between us. Is it that we all struggle with the problem of getting our protagonist in and out of danger. We all have to find a believable motivation for our protagonist to pursue the…
The Left Coast Crime Conference held in Sacramento, California brought together fewer agents and editors that I had noticed in last year’s conference. A quick scan of the program revealed only five panels out of the fifty-two varied offerings dealing with the world of finding fans and getting your book noticed. That means ninety percent…
Today I am to do a radio interview on an internet radio station with author John Byk. The subject will be my novel No Dice. Find John Byk’s radio blog interviews at http://2012writersalive.blogspot.com/ A work of fiction has to be about something, doesn’t it? I’m watching The Old Curiosity Shop on PBS and it’s about…
John Byk, who writes under the pen name of Conrad Johnson, wrote a mystery called Crying Bullets whom I thought of today in regard to the the school shootings in Ohio. I finished Crying Bullets recently, liked the book so much, and today just can’t get it out of my mind. Crying Bullets features Arnold…
So it’s New Year’s Day again, is it? I’ve been living in a chocolate fog for the last two weeks and it’s snuck up on me. It’s New Year’s Day and I’m not hung over, and that’s a very good thing. In fact, I haven’t been hung over for a very long time and that’s…
Derek Pacifico’s recent Crime Writer’s Homicide School was another sizzler. This is my third session with Sgt Pacifico, a law enforcement trainer for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. I didn’t need to worry about being bored sitting in a dull classroom in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley for three days. Pacifico is a spell-binding…
Because I’m immersed in my third murder mystery set in Santa Monica, I read other murder mystery authors almost exclusively. Why? I’m interested inthe dark trappings of murder and death. It’s the puzzle. It’s keeping violence and mayhem at a distance maybe. It’s hoping to learn some new wrinkle on human behavior. I’m curious to…
What happens when an idea for a book strikes and won’t leave you alone? What if it’s something you know nothing about? Such as organized crime in Santa Monica as in my second Dave Mason mystery titled Rip-Off? I read Chechen newspapers in English for three years and everything else I could find on the people…
I read Donna White Glaser’s The Enemy We Know with great pleasure. The cover with its bloody knife stood out, particularly the circle with A Letty Whittaker Mystery and the words 12 Step within the triangle, within the circle…
Years ago a group of spiritually-minded forest lovers began hanging mementos of personal significance on the branches of a semi-circle of pines high on the side of a mountain here in California. The site looked onto a distant mountain which, according to the legends of the native people, was the Center of the Cosmos. Someone dragged a…