New Book: Nothing Ever Happens Here

 I’ve read Nothing Ever Happens Here,  my current novel, at least 23 times before you, as readers ever see it. That means beginning to end. From the first draft to the moment when I superstitiously write The End and sent it off. I suspect most authors do. I...
The 3 Years it took to write By Accident

The 3 Years it took to write By Accident

It’s taken 3 years to bring By Accident to publication.  By Accident is the fifth in my Santa Monica police procedural series. Back in the day, whenever that was, I could write one crime novel a year. That was then. This is now. Things have happened in the meantime....
Joy at Writing The End

Joy at Writing The End

Anyone who writes will appreciate the joy of getting to an end of a piece of work that hooks all the segments together, ties up all the loose ends, and arrives at the right place to stop.  Gasp! The long slog of completing the first draft of my next crime fiction...

Write it as Memoir or Fiction?

A small group of writers gathered at the local art gallery several months ago with the intention of writing memoirs. In those early meetings, the subject of whether to fictionalize those memoirs came up often. “Oh, I can’t tell that story.  Aunt Mamie would kill me.” ...

Waiting for Something to Happen: the suspense

I’ve got a novel with an editor and an EBook on writing suspense in the pipeline, waiting for something to happen to push it toward publication. It’s an uncomfortable place, jammed up in a bottleneck. Both these projects took a longer time than when I started...

Writing Snappy Dialogue

You can write snappy dialogue even if you don’t consider yourself to be the most entertaining talker at the party. There are tips and tricks. Thought I’d excerpt a passage from my  EBook in the “Writing Your First Mystery” series, just to let...