The Things You Learn Doing Research

Guest Blogger: DP Lyle Writers are constantly doing research to make the story at hand more realistic, or at least more believable. That “willing suspension of disbelief” thing. One false move can yank the reader right out of the story and that’s never good. The reader loses confidence in the …

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ON RESURRECTING AN ICONIC CHARACTER

Guest Blogger: Eric Van Lustbader I wrote THE NINJA in 1980 and it became an immediate worldwide sensation, ultimately spending twenty-four weeks on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list. The book was picked up by 20th Century Fox to be made into a film. Five more novels featuring the protagonist, Nicholas …

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What to Do When You’re Stuck (Or How Scorpion Deception Almost Didn’t Get Created)

Guest Blogger: Andrew Kaplan You know you’re in trouble when you’ve got a contract to write the next book in a popular series (OK, not top of the NY TIMES bestseller list popular, but Bookscan and Amazon top 20 popular), a looming deadline, and you don’t have an idea in …

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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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How Characters Change With Real Life

Guest Blogger: Eric Van Lustbader When I created the character of Jack McClure for FIRST DAUGHTER, I made him very much like me. He was a dyslexic. My dyslexia is far less severe than Jack’s is, but nonetheless it created both challenges and advantages for me. I kept exchanging letters …

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Caitlin Strong: Action Hero!

Guest Blogger: Jon Land Female action hero.  For many thriller fans, that’s an oxymoron.  And you can’t really blame them.  A woman capable of mixing it up with the likes of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher?  Come on, no way, right? Wrong.  Caitlin Strong, who returns this month in STRONG VENGEANCE, …

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25% of You… Is Patented!

Guest Blogger: Brian Andrews Medical practitioners and medical researchers have always been joined at the hip, but with the advent of modern genetics, they’ve become strange bedfellows. The weirdness started in early 1950’s with an American woman named Henrietta Lacks. Lacks was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cervical cancer …

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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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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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