Accidentally In Love – On Series Characters By Angel Colon There’s a kind of magic that happens when a character finally “clicks”. Dialogue and action are second nature—of course he/she would do this because this happened. There’s a familiarity present that feels nearly physical, as if the character were a friend that hasn’t called in a while. That attachment lends […]
What Are the Elements of a Great PI Series? by Alex Segura I didn’t think I was writing a series when I started working on my debut novel, Silent City. At that point, I was flying blind, toying with the idea of writing my very own crime novel in the same vein as the books that inspired me. But as
Five Bits of Writing Advice That May or May Not Work For You By Rob Hart I want to open this with a caveat: Not all writing advice is good advice. Because it’s all subjective. Like how some people will tell you the only way to be successful is to write every day. I don’t believe that. I don’t
This post appeared in slightly different form on the crime fiction site Do Some Damage on April 3, 2018. *** I remember reading years ago that Jerzy Kosinski had an unusual writing routine. During every twenty four hour period, he would sleep twice for four hours. This allowed him to work during the quietest times of the night and early
This piece appeared in slightly different form on Criminal Element. The opening of Robert Benton’s private eye film The Late Show is chock-full of deception. We first see the Warner Brothers logo, but it’s not the Warner logo of 1977, the year the film was released. It’s a sepia colored 1940’s era Warner logo, and right away we hear soft 40’s style piano music
Sometimes, on panels or at book club visits, I’m asked, “Why mysteries?” Other than that I love to read them, that I grew up spending hours in the company of yet another Agatha Christie or Dick Francis, I like to reply that mysteries, and crime fiction in general, provide the satisfaction of structure. Crime fiction demands a beginning, middle, and
Once upon a time, I wrote for children. Old children. The creatures known in publishing as young adults—not quite teenagers but beginning to navigate the realties of a world that is not always kind. They have experienced cruelty, encountered their first villains. They know about sex—kind of, sort of. As young people, they don’t always have to power to vanquish
“Ripped from the headlines!” “Inspired by a real story.” “Some of what follows is true…” These are all familiar phrases that many mystery authors – including myself – have used to describe the murderous plots we write about in our books. On the face of it, this sure seems like a pretty nifty concept. Find a sensational crime in the
While it is possible to find mysteries, from fluffiest to darkest, that take place in the author’s version of never-never land, I prefer mysteries set in some semblance of the real world. There, diversity equals reality. How do we incorporate the varied world around us–races, disabilities, sexual identities and so on–into our storytelling? And how do we do it accurately
In this installment of “On the Case,” we talk to Detective Derick Waller, who is one of the NYPD 12, a group of minority officers who sued New York City and the department in 2016 over the use of illegal and discriminatory arrest quotas. Detective Waller retired from the NYPD on August 31, 2016, after serving 21-3/4 years. He is
Like most writers I know, I write because I have to. Not the kind of have to where you’re going to die if you don’t. Or even the kind of have to because if you don’t you can’t pay the bills and you’ll starve to death and so will your family and then you’ll be thrown out on the street
One question I get asked frequently as a mystery author is whether I spend a great deal of time doing research before writing my novels. The answer is yes. I’ve done a heckuva lot of research for my books. Just not the kind you might think. I’m a longtime New York City journalist (New York Post, New York Daily News,
My reading habit was mostly self-inflicted, though heavily influenced by my father’s collection of boyhood books, notably the works of Edgar Rice Boroughs, Zane Grey, Tom Swift and lots of other popular action writers of the early 20th century now lost in obscurity. But the mystery addiction is all my mother’s fault. She didn’t know the term, but she was
Never end a sentence with a preposition? That is the sort of pedantry up with which I shall not put. (Winston Churchill) Sometimes it’s okay to savagely split an infinitive. (Me) And if it sometimes seems right to start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but,’ do it. Subject, predicate, object is almost always the right order. Until it gets boring.
I always want to be writing anything other than the thing I’m supposed to be writing. This is the impulse that drives my productivity. It’s why I have so many irons in the fire, because there’s nothing like a fresh iron to take your mind off the ones already in the forge. The problem with working on the thing I’m
