Fact/Fiction: The beautifully blurry line – in writing, life, and religion

  Guest Blogger: Jon Jefferson, the “writer” half of Jefferson Bass Medieval mystery meets modern murder in Jefferson Bass’s latest Body Farm thriller     Writing THE INQUISITOR’S KEY– a crime novel set in France – required a research trip to Avignon, a walled city in Provence, nestled in a …

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Hooking the Reader

Guest Blogger: Dakota Banks Browsers in a bookstore scan the shelves, eyes moving rapidly from book to book. If your books are spine-out rather than face-out, you have only your title and your name to get the buyer to pick up your book. If your book is face-out, you have …

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Writing for the Thrill

Guest Blogger: D. L Wilson A thriller novel must be exciting, a real page turner, a book that readers just can’t put down. A successful thriller must start with a bang, build excitement, create tension, and finish with a bigger bang. After writing a university textbook and a cookbook to …

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H is for…

Guest Blogger: Alexander Gordon Smith In five days I head off to the States again for a book tour. It’s so exciting!! I’m in Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York, which are four places I have always wanted to visit. I know it’s going to be an amazing, if …

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Just because you can…

Guest Blogger: Marie Lamba Fiction writers can create a story out of anything, and every character they put down on paper can have their own conflict, their own storyline. This is both a blessing and a curse. When writing my new paranormal novel DRAWN, I knew I was creating what, …

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Start Here

Guest Blogger: Daniel Palmer When it comes to writing novels, beginnings can be difficult. A blank page at first appears liberating, but it can soon become utterly paralyzing. As writers, we’ve been taught to grab the reader’s attention in the first few pages—the first sentence if possible—and then hold it …

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On the Fear of Writing

Guest Blogger: Caragh M. O’Brien Please understand: I am not an insecure or fearful person. I’m strong and tough, and I laugh at myself regularly. Spiders and mice can’t throw me, and I’m only marginally afraid of the dark or donning a bikini. But today, I’m afraid of writing, and in …

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Remembering Memorial Day

Guest Blogger: Harry Shannon My name is Harry and I’m a book addict. I grew up devouring horror and crime fiction, snatching up thrillers by Donald Hamilton, Richard Prather, Ed McBain and John D. MacDonald. Like a lot of us, I’d always meant to try my hand at a novel. …

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Dead Fellas

  Steven Savile, Lazarus, and Dave Sakmyster walk into a bar… okay, it sounds like the set up for an elaborate (and bad) joke, but what do these three gents have in common? A Brit living and working in Sweden, a guy so historical he died twice, and the man …

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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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