5 Things More Important Than Talent

Guest Blogger: Jane Friedman In the July/August 2011 issue of WRITER’S DIGEST magazine, I have a featured article, “Revising Your Path to Publication.” If you’re aiming for traditional publication, and you’re wondering how close you might be to reaching your goal, I highly recommend picking up the issue and reading …

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Preparing To Launch

Guest Blogger: Jamie Freveletti My novel, THE NINTH DAY, launches on September 27 and begins making its way into the world.  It’s my third and the joy of writing has only increased over time. The premise came to me early, the words flew onto the page and each morning I was …

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Zombies

Guest Blogger: Jonathan Maberry DUST & DECAY (Simon & Schuster) is the second in my series of post-apocalyptic thrillers set fifteen years after a zombie plague has wiped out most of mankind. Okay…if you’re still reading this then you haven’t been scared off by words like ‘post-apocalyptic’ and ‘zombie’.  Good …

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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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Unlikely Friends

Guest Blogger: Lisa Unger A long time ago I stopped thinking of characters as creations of my imagination, and started to understand that they are more like people who I’ve met along my colorful, complicated, ever-changing fictional journey. They come to me as they are, with their own names, personalities and …

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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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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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Where Ideas Come From

Guest Blogger: Alafair Burke My new book, LONG GONE, comes out today. I mention that not to plug my work (okay, it was totally a plug), but to explain why I’ve been thinking lately about where ideas come from. I finished writing LONG GONE nearly a year ago. For the last several months, …

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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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