Go Ahead, Watch TV and Movies

Guest Blogger: Martha Brockenbrough When I was growing up, my mom would let us know when—in her view—we’d had too much fun. My brothers and sisters and I jokingly called it TMF or “exceeding the fun quotient.” Mom used to feel the TV for telltale signs of warmth when she …

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The “Reality” of Fiction

Guest Blogger: John Lescroart “This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.” This disclaimer occurs behind the title …

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Sacrifice

Guest Blogger: Christine Johnson I love music. All kinds of music, from punk to folk to blues to classical, I have a little bit of everything. No matter what kind of mood I’m in, there’s some album in my collection that fits. Like lots of writers, I listen to music …

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Open Letter to Readers

Guest Blogger: Lucienne Diver I’m doing a crazy-obsessive amount of promo…or, at least, guest blogs…for my new novel BAD BLOOD. Why? I love these characters.  I love this story.  I want people to buy a lot of e-books (and later print) so that I can justify continuing to spend so much …

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Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Guest Blogger: Gregg Hurwitz The most dreaded question for authors. Because the truth is…we don’t really know ourselves. I suppose it’s like asking anyone where they get their ideas. We mostly have no clue, right? They just sort of show up in our heads. So the where is impossible, methinks, …

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The Hardest Part

Guest Blogger: Jeff Abbott There are two questions every writer will get once their work is out in the world: how long does it take you to write a book, and where do you get your ideas? What makes me smile about those well-intentioned questions is that they seem to …

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Nick Heller’s Boston

Guest Blogger: Joseph Finder When the time came for me to create a series character, I knew right away that whoever that character might turn out to be, he’d have to be from Boston. Nick Heller, as he turned out, is, like me, an adopted son, rather than a native …

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Modern Crime Fiction: Cool Science or Hot Characters?

Guest Blogger: D.P. Lyle Over the past decade I’ve answered literally thousands of medical and forensic questions for fiction writers. I think last count was somewhere north of 6000. One of the questions I’m often asked is: How much do I need to know about forensic science? The short answer …

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Funny Search Engine Terms

To throw something a little fun into the mix, I decided to blog about the funniest, unique or most interesting search engine keywords/phrases that brought people to my site and to include others. Here’s what we discovered. From Jen Forbus at Jen’s Book Thoughts, a book blog that covers the world of …

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Writing is Never Routine

Guest Blogger: Norb Vonnegut Many people ask about my “writing routine.” I think they expect to hear stories about a cone of silence—about me shutting the door on sounds or emails or any one of the million distractions that conspire to make authors unproductive. Well, the truth is I like …

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