For five years now I've been reading advice from publishers, editors, agents, and fellow writers about how to succeed in the business of selling a book. I have had some success, but I also feel at times like I'm buried in advice.

Don't start with a prologue! You must have a hook! Format exactly as the industry demands! Number your pages on the right! No, number on the left, next to the slug! Make the first line block style! Indent EVERY paragraph! Ban widow/orphan control! Make your…

I don’t know about other writers, but I get most of my really good ideas in the shower. There’s something about standing dead-center in a stream of hot water that dissolves blocks, brings characters to life, turns mental pictures into streams of words,

and generally makes me feel as though there’s literally nothing I can’t

write. Improve the opening of Dickens’ “Bleak House”? No problem.…

Hello:

I'd like to announce my second mystery story to go live in the Amazon Shorts program.

It is entitled, "No Going Back," and is the tale of a journalist who makes a fateful decision in dealing with a traumatic event.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VJAYIS/ref=dp_bib_1/105-2981074-7253258

Hope my fans will take a…

Interview with Margot Justes

September 3, 2007

What's the title of your book and what's it about?…

Posted by Sheila Connolly

Alfred Peet died this week. To most of the world that means nothing, but Alfred has been a daily part of my life for close to thirty years. Alfred Peet founded Peet's Coffee.

I first encountered Peet's coffee when I moved to the Berkeley area in the late 1970s. I found a dead-end job at the University of…

I've left it till now, but today has been one year since my father passed away, aged 83.

I was there by his hospital bedside, as he ebbed away, peacefully in his sleep. His health had been deteriorating for the last 2 years, and it was only after we managed to get him hospitalised, that we discovered that apart from the diabetes, that we aleady knew of, we found out he also had pancreatic cancer.

Between myself and my brothers, we thought that his weight…

It's bad enough that I still say that I roll down the car window and dial a phone number. We old folks still talk about records and tapes even though we have nothing in our music cabinets but CDs. It's acceptable to say something in writing and type on a computer. We park our cars in the driveway and drive them on the parkway.

If you think about it too much, words can make you crazy. I guess the thought came to me because it's…

This is your chance to win a copy of crime mystery SILENCED CRY. The voting page for AUGUST Book Cover of the Month is up and the cover of SILENCED CRY is awaiting your vote.…

My next novel, Heroes Often Fail, is due out September 28th!

Here's the cover:

I have seen the future and it is a fine revival of the past, Astonishing Adventures Magazine is finally here. Katherine Tomlinson, Tim Gallagher and John Don Carlucci have…

The month of September has me waxing sentimental. First, hard as it is to believe, my wonderful (Yes, the best guy in the world!) husband and I are celebrating our 29th wedding anniversary. My, time flies when you're having fun.

September, 2007, is also the month in which I'll attend my high school reunion. And it's not my tenth or twenty-fifth. Nope. I won't say which one, but my! Time flies when you're having fun.

There are a number…

So I'm into my conversion of EL REY from script to novel form, hoping to iron out the kinks in the story whilst doing so, and my imagination stalls on me, taking me back in time to the not-so-salad-days of HEREAFTER, a story I wrote when I was feeling pretty low and overdosing on Dashiell Hammett/Clive Barker. I'm chalking this moment up to just being another angle of attack from the demon known as Procrastination (kind of like blogging), but I couldn't help getting lost in that story again…

The introduction of The Ultimate Spy Book has a section titled "Who Spies?". It divides the motive of spies into 4 categories, encompassed by the acronym M.I.C.E.: Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego.

Money is pretty straight forward. Financial gain or financial troubles are strong motives for just about anybody.

Ideology is the beliefs a spy has in the country they spy for. The book mentions people who believed in communism and spied for the USSR. On the other hand I…