7 Tips for Writing Crime Fiction by Dana Stabenow (written for Writer’s Digest) 3. Put your protagonist at risk. Physically, mentally, emotionally, any or all. Liam Campbell jumped out of an airplane (on purpose), was nearly flattened by a herd of walrus, and has been shot at and missed far too many times. We won’t…
7 Tips for Writing Crime Fiction by Dana Stabenow (written for Writer’s Digest) 2. Love your creeps. Put the villain on display and do it early in the narrative. Get your reader invested in the character and then betray the hell out of both of them. Read the rest at Writer’s Digest here.
7 Tips for Writing Crime Fiction (written for Writer’s Digest) by Dana Stabenow I only wish I’d had this list when I began writing, but thirty-seven novels later I do have a few things figured out. I don’t follow all these rules slavishly. I say begin with the murder but…often I don’t. Every writer does…
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,…
Another of Marshall’s entries in the series he calls “Power of Place,” this one involving looks through the geographical lens at maybe not the first countries or locations you might think of when you think of our planet’s future. There are some surprising discoveries. Saudi Arabia is investing heavily in alternative energy and, following in…
In 2009 I was asked to answer the Book Brahmins Questionnaire on Shelf Awareness. Never hard to get me talking about books I love, so I did, and here are their questions and my answers, lightly edited. On your nightstand now: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. I was raised in…
The M.J. Murdock Trust, a great Friend of Storyknife, sent a film crew up to Alaska last year (2021) to talk to the people involved in projects they have funded here. An aside on the Murdock Trust–it was started by a guy who sold Piper airplanes, and the Trust donates to projects in the states…
On First Looking into Sexton’s Cummiskey Alley by Dana Stabenow He writes of the bend toward Asia from aYankee mill town on the bend of a riverWhere dropped r’s leave one dead to rights andHearts are stolen without leaving bruises. Here on the bend, not a mill town but a Fish town girl, my mother caught the…
I love the acknowledgements pages in historical novels, like the ones in Jim Benn’s Billy Boyles series. It is where the writing rubber meets the road; i.e., where the writer reveals where fact and fiction diverge (or don’t) in the narrative that precedes them. So here are the “notes and acknowledgements” from Disappearance of a…
The 12th and final book in Benedict Jacka’s Alex Verus series comes out tomorrow*, in what I’m certain will be a slam-bang finish to this urban fantasy buckle-and-swash. Here’s my review of Forged. *FYI, I’ll be out of contact for the day. Here in the next to last book, author Benedict Jacka is showing some…
