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For those of you who have asked, “Where did the idea for Wash Gowan’s mansion come from?” Behold. I takes my ideas where I finds ’em. This time it was on Laughing Squid.
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Love Tom Gauld.
James Byrne explains the genesis of Des the Gatekeeper
Dana sez, Now and then I bat my eyelashes at authors of books I have loved and ask them to write a little something for the blog. Sometimes they say yes. James Byrne writes When I decided I wanted to create a single male protagonist action/adventure mystery, the first thing I needed to do was…
Read more James Byrne explains the genesis of Des the Gatekeeper
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In April I enjoyed the privilege of being interviewed on My Bookcase Slays, by host and author Melissa Westemeier. It was a terrific conversation and she was very complimentary about The Harvey Girl. Thanks, Melissa! She was kind enough to send me a list of her questions in advance. See below for me putting my…
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If you’re a writer, you only wish you could write this well. Some excerpts: According to the news, Kyle Rittenhouse, the man who fatally shot two protesters during the 2020 demonstrations in Kenosha and then became the right-wing’s favorite little armed grievance goblin and mascot for gun worship and “self-defense” cosplay, was hospitalized after a…
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(Short Mystery Fiction Society can be found on Facebook)
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“No plot survives first contact with the writing of any of my novels.” –Dana Stabenow (with apologies to Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder) At the moment I’m working on the second Harvey Girl novel, The Iron Trail. At the behest of my editor I wrote a six-page outline consisting of chapter numbers with…
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A fascinating read, with something important to teach every writer, fiction or non. “You weren’t bitten by a dog,” one nurse told me. “You were mauled by one.” It took me months to recover, and that gave me time to think. I thought about my body, which hurt in ways I’d never felt—not just in worse ways,…
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I love a good acknowledgements page at the back of a novel, where the author tells us where they got all their ideas. I try to write them for mine, too. Here’s the one I wrote for The Harvey Girl. It’s six pages long in the book, and it ain’t short here, either. I hope…
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So a while ago at the Poisoned Pen I pinch hit as host for Barbara Peters, who was slugging back Singapore Slings in the bar at the Raffles Hotel in, you guessed it, Singapore at the time. We’re still not speaking to her. The guest du soir was Paula Lafferty, of the bestseller The Once…
