You Can’t Possibly Think I Meant You?

I thought the story about readers identifying with characters in your work was apocryphal.  When it happened to me with unpleasant results it surprised me. In my first book, NO DICE, a character changes his name when he enters law school, hoping to disguise his...

Interview with Mystery Author Mar Preston

Interview with Mystery Author Mar Preston  Posted by Nicole Weaver on June 27, 2012 at 8:47amView Blog Mystery author See http://www.bloggymoms.com/profiles/blogs/interview-with-mystery-author-mar-preston# Mar Preston talks about her latest novel, Rip-Off, the second...

How Much Background is Enough

My Dave Mason police procedural series is about the Santa Monica Police Department and the city itself, a tourist destination with a colorful background, present, and future. I love Santa Monica, but will others care that much? What is critical information for me, the...

Murder: Knowing Why

My second murder mystery has been published, titled Rip-Off. People ask why you write one kind of book and not another. Why whodunit murder mysteries in my case? Why not literary family fiction? I worked decades as an academic researcher at the University of Southern...

In the Nick of Time: Our Left Coast Crime Conference Panel

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...

What’s a Crime Writer’s Conference Like?

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...

The Author as Expert

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...

School Shooting: John Byk’s Crying Bullets

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...

2012? What Lies Ahead?

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...

Too Rosy a View of Cops?

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...