At the direction of my good friend, Judith Cassis, who is a professional writer and marketer, I have just finished three eBooks of about 10,000 words on the topic of writing your first mystery. Have I revealed secrets known only to a few bestselling crime novelists?...
Writing police procedurals as I do, I read a lot of police procedural fiction because I enjoy it. It’s not as if I want to imagine myself in the role of the first on scene investigator. Imagine the stress of that in real life? And the smell? The bossing people around....
When a book comes alive it’s a wonderful feeling. Your words sparkle on the pages. The dialogue is snappy. You even laugh out loud at some of your one-liners. The characters leap off the page. You can’t wait to get back to working on it. Well, I’m not there yet. This...
Here I am at the Southern California Writers Conference in San Diego for the weekend. I ventured out of the hotel this evening looking for some dinner, using my GPS to drive to an unfamiliar location. Not only was it dark and scary, but then thick fog rolled in off...
I like to live dangerously, tinkering with the edge of old addictions. I just laid a jigsaw puzzle out on my dining room table. Now what earthly good are jigsaw puzzles? What does hours hunched over a scattering of brightly-coloredpuzzle pieces accomplish? You might...
