People often ask if I’m afraid I’ll run out of ideas. No, that’s not what I fear. My CPA, who I’ve been with since before I sold my first book, including those seven–or was it eight? possibly nine–years I had no earned income at all, retired last year. We’ll pass over the massive trauma this…
If you write long enough, eventually someone will ask you to contribute a chapter for a serial novel. What is a serial novel, you ask? In the archaic meaning, it’s a work of fiction published in installments–think of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop and people in New York waiting on the docks for the ship carrying copies…
On March 15th 49 Writers hosted a conversation between me and Haines, Alaska writer Heather Lende. Pro tip: It never does for writers to take themselves too seriously. We didn’t. My review of Heather’s book is here, Of Bears and Ballots, which book you should most definitely read along with everything else she’s ever written.
[Written at Laurie King’s request for The Arvon Book of Crime and Thriller Writing, 2012.] Those “Eureka!” moments Writing successfully is sweat equity. Butt in the chair, hour after hour, grinding out sentences and paragraphs and pages, none of which, one is grimly aware, may make the final cut when it comes time to edit. That…
Note: From time to time on #thiswritinglife I will post reviews of books about the building blocks of our craft. If on the way to looking up “occurrence” for the seventy-third time to see if it’s two c’s or two r’s (both) and an “e” or and “a” (an e) and get sidetracked first by osmometry,…
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…
If I had a nickel for every time somebody said to me, “I’ve always wanted to write a book,” I’d be a rich woman and I’d never have to write another word. But seriously, folks. The two questions I am always asked are, 1, how to get published, and 2, how to get an agent.…
7 Tips for Writing Crime Fiction [published in Writer’s Digest February 13, 2021] I only wish I’d had this list when I began writing, but 37 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…
[From an interview with David Allen Binder, 2012 or thereabouts.] What is the most important thing that you have learned in your writing experience, so far? To write every day. Even if it’s only a sentence a day, that is one more sentence than you had the day before. By the end of the month…
