An Obsession with the Past

Guest Blogger: David Morrell Novelists sometimes find themselves stuck with what John Barth calls “fill in the blank” writing. A character walks into an office, which needs to be described. If it’s an attorney’s office, there’ll probably be law books and photographs of the attorney’s family or maybe of powerful …

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Seriously Funny

Guest Blogger:  Jill Wolfson The four novels that I’ve written for the middle-reader and the young adult audience all deal with heavy topics – foster care, unemployment, depression, death, medical emergencies. In COLD HANDS, WARM HEART, I actually killed character – a likeable teenage girl – in the first chapter, …

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When did you first make Miss Dickinson’s Acquaintance?

Guest Blogger: Michaela MacColl I have to admit that poetry has never been my thing. I’m a prose girl. I like plot and character development. All too often when I read poetry I feel as though the writer is scoring points off me – I’m just not as clever as …

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The Bionic Man is Here

Guest Blogger: Mark Alpert I was a nerdy kid who watched a lot of television in the 1970s, and my favorite show was THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN. The best part of the program was the 90-second intro, which showed the disastrous mission that nearly killed astronaut Steve Austin (played …

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Food Trucks and Hoarding

Guest Blogger: Lisa McMann I admit it. I love reality TV. I love the thrill of SURVIVOR, all the cooking shows, especially THE GREAT FOOD TRUCK RACE, and I am strangely fascinated by shows about people’s obsessions, addictions, and dark secrets. I’ve even been on a reality show called SEARCHING FOR …

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Five Key Ways I Built My Indigo World

Guest Blogger: Jordan Dane The inspiration behind Indigo Awakening (book #1 in the Hunted Series, Harlequin Teen) came from researching Indigo children. Query “Indigo Child” on the Internet and you’ll get over 8 million hits. Real life and headlines often inspire my books and this time is no exception. Conspiracy …

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Trust A Cop? Not The Amish!

Guest Blogger: Karen Harper Unless you know Amish thinking as well as I do, after studying and visiting them for twenty years and writing nine suspense novels set among them (or, OK, unless you remember the classic movie WITNESS,) you probably don’t realize the Amish usually “have no truck” with …

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Researching the Amish

Guest Blogger: Julie Kramer For my latest thriller, I decided to go Amish. At that time, I didn’t realize that Amish fiction was on an upswing. I just needed another Minnesota-based adventure for Riley Spartz, the reporter/heroine in my series set in the desperate world of  TV news. Minnesota has …

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For Honor’s Sake

Guest Blogger: Merry Jones Thrillers and mysteries are supposed to entertain.  I write with that in mind.  But sometimes, in the course of writing those entertaining books, I come across information that affects me.  For example, while doing research for BEHIND THE WALLS, I learned about the following: Case 1: …

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The Deep Zone Proves It: Reality Is Fantastic Enough

Guest Blogger: James M. Tabor I know that vampires and werewolves and zombies—oh my!—are all the rage now, but I’ve never felt the need to step over the line from reality to fantasy, or wherever those things live. Reality is plenty fantastic in its own right, as the real events …

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