Remember earlier in #thiswritinglife I enjoined the writers among you to never pass up an opportunity to stretch your writing muscle. And then Byron Birdsall got in touch to ask me to write a foreword to his collection of black-and-white drawings called Byron Birdsall’s Alaska. Never pass up an opportunity to stretch your writing muscle.…
[ITW interview with Gwen Florio, upon the publication of Less Than a Treason in 2017. Edited.] You are best known for your twenty-book series featuring Kate Shugak, an Aleut private investigator who lives in a fictional park in Alaska (we’ll get to the other three series in a bit). Let me repeat that: twenty books…
Storyknife Press: a publishing opportunity This year Storyknife has our first writers in cabins! We survived our capital construction campaign, construction, and covid, and we are now fulfilling our mission to support women writers by providing them with the time and space and inspiration (that view!) and fellowship they need to write books we will all…
I finished the first draft of the third Eye of Isis novel last week, and under strict instructions from the August writers in residence at Storyknife I am to take a week off. Relax. Take a walk on the beach. Drink a bottle of wine with friends. Read books instead of writing them. If only.…
Change, growing from within and forced from without, is the mainspring of character development.—Rita Mae Brown Anticipation is the sweet pain to know whatever’s next–a must for every real writer.—Richard Ford If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you…
So, in Theft of an Idol (Isis3), Tetisheri discovers a body in the desert. I’m from the Arctic myself. I have a very rudimentary notion of how bodies decay (or don’t) in the cold, and no notion at all of what happens if they are left out in the Sahara. This requires some research. Google,…
Time. In crime fiction time is the essence of detection. If Whositz says “I was sleeping with my mistress when my wife was murdered” the first thing the detective on the case will do is verify that alibi. If Whositz is seen leaving his mistress’ house by the back alley in time to get home,…
[2016 interview with author Gwen Florio for ITW] First things first: I probably pronounce your name differently each time I say it. Please help save me from myself—Stab-en-oh or Stab-en-ow? STAH (as in stab) eh no You are best known for your 20-book series featuring Kate Shugak, an Aleut private investigator who lives in a…
