So now is the time when I start chumming the waters for the new book. It’s the second novel in my Eye of Isis series, which is set in Alexandria and Egypt in the time of Cleopatra. The first book, Death of an Eye, opened in May 47 BC. Caesar and Cleopatra have returned from…
Hobo Jim died today. Back in the day (2002, I think) I had the privilege of writing about him in Alaska magazine, and this is how I’m going to remember him. THUNDERFOOT by Dana Stabenow There are lots of reasons to go to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer every year. Turkey legs and crab…
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,…
I wrote this column the Fourth of July 2002, the year after 9/11. It was published in Alaska magazine in September 2002, is collected with all my other columns and features in an e-book, Alaska Traveler: Dispatches from Alaska’s Frontier, and is now available in audio. I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom of late,…
Log for 2021 Alcan Drive, aka Dawn and Dana’s Excellent Adventure. Covid-19 has made nothing easier but it has not made everything impossible, either. [All photos by Dawn.] May 9, 2021 First day–Got to Sumas, Washington at 9am, across the border by 11am. Four cars/campers/RVs in front and behind. Very nice, very efficient Canadian border…
In August 1914, Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set sail from England to Antarctica, their goal to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. These guys didn’t have any kind of luck but bad. First their ship gets stuck in the ice for ten months, then the ship is crushed in the ice,…
Read more It would be 20 months before the rest of the world knew they had survived.
If you’ve ever seen Jaws you’re familiar with this story. Days after it delivered Little Boy to Tinian, the battle cruiser USS Indianapolis is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. The attack is so effective that the bow literally vaporizes and because they are running “yoke-modified,” with most of the hatches dogged open because the crew…
In the fall of 1991, deep wreck diver John Chatterton found a German U-boat under 230 feet of water off the New Jersey coast where no U-boat had ever been recorded sunk. According to all the history books, it simply couldn’t be there. It took Chatterton and fellow diver Richie Kohler six years, multiple dives…
In Blue Latitudes journalist Tony Horwitz follows in the footsteps of Captain Cook, beginning with a week working as a member of the crew on board a replica of Cook’s ship Endeavor. I’d always thought of Cook as this stereotypical British officer, all his buttons properly polished and looking down a very long nose at…
Read more Tony Horwitz follows in the footsteps of Captain Cook
7 Tips for Writing Crime Fiction by Dana Stabenow (written for Writer’s Digest) 6. Decide early on if you’re writing a series or a stand-alone.* Don’t introduce that great character only to kill him off at the end of the first book of a 22-book (and counting) series. Don’t ask me how I know. *Realize…
Read more 6. Decide early on if you’re writing a series or a stand-alone.*