Writing Fear

Guest Blogger: Weston Ochse I’ve been a horror author for about 12 years now. I never started out to be a horror author, but once I started being published, that’s what people started to call me. Which was cool. As long as there’s the word author at the end the …

Continue reading

A Writer’s Tools and a Writer’s Process

Guest Blogger: Carla Neggers Thanks for having me here, Janice! Early in my career, I bought my first computer and started typing. Ah. I was in love. It was far more complicated and unreliable than computers are today, and, sure enough, one day I turned it on and got gobbledygook. …

Continue reading

The Good Life

Guest Blogger: Kelli Stanley So. The Writing Life. Or, as I insist on calling it, the good life. And not the “good life” that Jerome Bixby wrote about in his infamously horrific short story (later filmed as a Twilight Zone episode  with Bill Mumy—remember it? But I digress …). Maybe …

Continue reading

Every Writer’s Best Friend

Guest Blogger: Brad Parks A dear friend of mine walked out on me yesterday, just left without word or warning. It happened around 8 o’clock in the morning, shortly after I sat down to my keyboard to write. I didn’t even hear him go. He just scooted out, leaving me …

Continue reading

Best Advice I Ever Got

Guest Blogger: Brad Meltzer After my first novel was published, I struggled with the next one. I wasn’t worried what people thought (I was working on it long before the first one ever came out). And I wasn’t worried about the rejection (my first novel—still unpublished to this day—got me …

Continue reading

Ready – Set – Action!

Guest Blogger: Karen Dionne I love action. Not in real life. In real life, I’m a writer, which means I spend 90% of my day sitting in front of my computer. Oh, once in a while I get up, stretch a little, put on my shoes, and walk out to …

Continue reading

Best of Bouchercon

I hit up a bunch of authors and other publishing professionals who attended Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, for a bit of writing wisdom they took away from the con. Here’s what they had to say: BRAD PARKS—If you’re going to take writing advice from anyone, might as well be Michael Connelly—I …

Continue reading

Rooting for the Monster

Guest Blogger: Sophie Littlefield Thanks for having me, Janice! I am so intrigued by the work you and  Jonathan Maberry do in your book (WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE), where you examine the age-old good versus evil theme in fiction. I’ve thought a lot about the concept of evil in monsters. …

Continue reading

She’s such a character!

Guest Blogger:  Alan Jacobson Nearly every interview I’ve done the past three years has included at least this question: you’re a guy and your main character’s a female. (Then the question takes on various iterations.) What the heck? Why? What were you thinking? (Or my favorite:) How do you do …

Continue reading