by Michelle Bennington Cozy mystery typically calls to mind bakeries, quirky characters, and the sweeter side of life paired with a mystery to solve; they rarely call to mind mental illness. But my book isn’t a typical cozy mystery. With a hoarder, human trafficking, and a possible ghost, Dumpster...
TOTAL IMMERSION
The Art of Going DEEP: Part 1 By Chris Goff ThrillerFest 2017 when RED SKY launched Over the years, I’ve spoken at writer’s conferences ad nauseum about plotting the novel, researching the novel, creating characters, writing realistic dialogue and boots on the ground settings. All very important...
ON TOUR WITH DEAD WRITERS
By Z.J. Czupor On Tour with Dead Writers is Z.J. Czupor's new installment on Rogue Women Writers. Guess the correct dead writer and be entered to win a free book. A Google Doodle was created specifically for this internationally acclaimed mystery author on April 23, 2015. The Doodle honors her...
I WILL FIND YOU: THE USE OF FORENSIC GENEALOGY
By Lisa Black Forensic genetic genealogy burst into the American lexicon in 2018 with the identification of the Golden State Killer, but the methodology had been around for decades. It was developed not to find the perverse and violent, but the loved. Around the turn of the millennium, companies...
A TRIBUTE TO TEACHERS
By Tosca Lee Earlier today I peeked at a list of questions sent to me ahead of an upcoming interview. One of them was this: What got you into writing? I’ve shared the story of how my dad made a deal with me to write my first novel during a summer in college. But I’d already been writing (not...
BRINGING A CHARACTER TO LIFE
By Alex Kava In honor of National Dog Month, I want to share how one of my characters—a favorite of readers as well as my own—came to life. Grace is a scrappy, sixteen-pound Jack Russell terrier. In my Ryder Creed series, Creed is a former Marine K9 handler who now owns a training facility...
DUN, DUN, DUN, DUN…DEADLINE!
By Jenny Milchman When Steven Spielberg’s film version of Peter Benchley’s blockbuster Jaws came out, it furthered the reach of the novel, spawned (ha, get it, a fish reference?) a whole school of (I can keep going) sometimes great, sometimes comical derivations that continue to this day (I’m...
KILLER PUZZLES: 8 Books Featuring Locked Rooms, Deadly Puzzles, or Both
By Isabella Maldonado Imagine you’re trapped in a locked room, forced to use your deductive reasoning, cunning, and wit to escape. Now up the ante with a ticking time bomb set to detonate in less than a minute. To make things worse, each incorrect solution speeds up the countdown clock. Finally,...
DISPATCH FROM THE CAVE
No Excuses Accepted By Tracy Clark I don’t have anything interesting to write about this time. You see, I’ve been living in a cave, figuratively not literally, for months now. Nose to the grindstone. Shoulder to the wheel. All that jazz. I have a book to finish. A deadline looming. Writing....
COAUTHORING A NOVEL
An Interview with Coauthors Tosca Lee and Marcus Brotherton By Tosca Lee It's the question we get asked all the time: How Can Two Authors Write a Novel Together? My coauthor of The Long March Home, Marcus Brotherton, and I discuss. 🙂 Tosca: This is my second time co-authoring, and it’s very...