This is the first in our member-written series: My Favorite Crime Movie. I graduated from the University of Florida law school at the end of 1977 and stayed in Gainesville for almost another year, trying to figure out what to do – a process I’ve since learned may pause but never quite ends. North Central Florida was rough and rural, but […]
Playwright, novelist, public radio essayist, and popular culture scholar Gary Earl Ross is a professor emeritus at the University of Buffalo. His work includes the award-winning plays Matter of Intent and The Guns of Christmas and the novel Blackbird Rising. His 1925 courtroom drama The Mark of Cain will be onstage this season at Subversive Theatre’s Manny Fried Playhouse in
This is the second in our member-written series: My Favorite Golden Age Mystery. Like many good stories, Dame Agatha Christie’s novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd developed from an idea tossed off playfully by two of her friends. The novel was published in 1926, early in her career, and was merely the third time Hercule Poirot, her Belgian private investigator,
Way back in 1930 the biggest show on the air — the radio air that is — was a show that started with the chilling refrain, “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? The shadow knows . . . ” Secrets are the dark side of our portraits. First, the Dutch Masters created this nuance in oil, and
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
Nancy A. Hughes earned a Bachelor of Science in English with emphasis in journalism and advertising at Penn State, and a certification in corporate community relations at Boston College. Living in rural Pennsylvania, she started her own public relations business, followed by corporate work in media, public, and community relations. All of which she later abandoned for murder and mayhem.
This begins a new series on our blog: My Favorite Golden Age Mystery, written by our members. Her father gave her a gun. Nancy Drew, girl detective, was about to embark on the adventure of The Hidden Staircase (1930), and her father was worried. “[Y]ou’ve often said you wanted me to grow up self-reliant and brave,” she countered. And she had
This is the third in Valerie Peterson’s series on author marketing. You may want to check out her previous articles, “7 Common Mistakes of an Author Website” and “How to Create a ‘Selling’ Author Bio.” “Book discovery” is a much-used buzz-phrase of the publishing industry. In the increasingly competitive and very digital book marketplace with shrinking readerships and revenues, authors,
This is the second in Valerie Peterson’s series on author marketing. You may want to check out her previous article, “7 Common Mistakes of an Author Website.” Your bio is a marketing tool, pure and simple. Properly executed, it can help you attract an agent, editors, journalists, and readers to your work. But if your current bio has you revisiting
Your author website is the cornerstone of your media platform, and it’s the one piece of real estate that you can (mostly) control. Your author website is the thing that: 1. Validates you as a professional writer with a knowledge of the marketplace (even before you publish) 2. Substantiates your ability to draw in an audience – which is what
Lorenzo Carcaterra is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sleepers, A Safe Place, Apaches, Gangster, Street Boys, Paradise City, Chasers, and Midnight Angels. He is a former writer/producer for Law & Order and has written for National Geographic Traveler, The New York Times Magazine, Details, and Maxim. His most recent novel is The Wolf. He lives in New York
“No one can write a book without an outline,” the New York Times #1 Bestselling author said to the assembled audience of mystery/thriller novelists, aspiring writers, and fans. There was not the slightest provisional hint in his tone. He was speaking ex cathedra. This was the first line of his papal encyclical on how to write a novel. The interviewer
I planned my Trump novel a year ago, back when Trump was funny. It was to be the third in my Travel Writer mystery series, published by Alibi, Random House’s digital imprint for crime fiction. The premise was that my protagonist, Jacob Smalls, would be reviewing a Bahamas cruise sponsored by an outrageous rightwing dilettante tycoon who liked being on
Annette Dashofy is the USA Today best-selling author of the two-time Agatha-nominated Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania’s tight-knit Vance Township. With a Vengeance, the fourth in the series, was released in May. Dashofy and her husband live on part of what used to be her grandfather’s dairy farm with one very spoiled cat.
John Grisham is a believer in the Elevator Pitch. You know, the one where you get on a lift with an editor or agent and hook the unsuspecting soul with a summary of your story that makes the “This is my floor” ding coincide with the light bulb appearing over his or her head. Assuming we all might learn something from
