All Blog Posts Tagged 'authors' (181)

How to create empathy as a writer

Malcolm Muggeridge (an old English literateur) once said that George Orwell “was no good as a novelist, because he didn’t have the interest in character.” Well, I didn’t need to tell you who George Orwell was, so you may doubt the judgment of the largely forgotten Muggeridge. But I think he was very close to an important factor for the novelist.

Here’s why: Character creates empathy in a novel. It puts the reader in a relationship with the work. Muggeridge’s…

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Added by Matt Rees on May 27, 2010 at 11:42pm — 4 Comments

Bad to the Bone Confessions of a Kindle Novelist

The Game Changer – eBooks vs. traditional book publishing

by Robert W. Walker, ebook author/publisher…

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Added by robert walker on May 25, 2010 at 4:13pm — 2 Comments

'Exotic' crime fiction makes unpalatable places bearable

“Exotic” crime fiction has taken off in the last decade. People want to read about detectives in far-off places, even if they don’t want to wade through learned histories of those distant lands.

Many of the biggest selling novels of the last decade have been “exotic crime.” You’ll find a detective novel set almost everywhere in the world, from the “Number One Ladies Detective Agency” in Botswana through Camilleri’s Sicily to dour old Henning Mankell in…

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Added by Matt Rees on May 13, 2010 at 7:30pm — 1 Comment

I'm a Kindlette!

I just found my e-book, GO HOME AND DIE, is now available on Kindle. That's so cool.

Now if I just had a Kindle of my very own!

Added by Peg Herring on May 8, 2010 at 2:08am — 3 Comments

Bookstores Done Right

When they're done right, bookstores feel kind of like home. You do as you like, stay as long as you like, have a snack, read a little, chat a little about your favorite things, and get intellectual stimulation from discussion with those who "live" there. I've been in lots of bookstores in the past few years, staying near a table of my books and directing customers to the bathroom or the nonfiction shelves. As I visit, I see the staff in action, and it's easy to tell the best…

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Added by Peg Herring on April 14, 2010 at 10:48pm — 3 Comments

Interview with Mitzi Szereto

http://mitziszereto.com/blog/interview-with-mitzi-szereto/

Added by Mitzi Szereto on April 14, 2010 at 9:52pm — No Comments

Dark Tales of Terror Signing Hunington, WV 4-6pm 4/3/10 Media Coverage! at Borders

Please Join Miranda Phillips Walker, Robert Walker and other WV Authors on Saturday 4/3/10 at Borders, Huntington, WV 4-6PM a slew of authors in the WV writers based anthology Dark Tales of Terror, edited by award-winning, native West Virginian, Michael Knost will gather to sign books & reign in all the pastels of Easter and keep folks focused on The Dark Side of Easter....hehehehehe. It's really about the goose bumps....not the eggs.

Added by Miranda Phillips Walker on April 2, 2010 at 8:22am — No Comments

Back to Israel: Recall what's foreign

When you live in a foreign place, it can become home. You forget how foreign it is.

Then you go to another foreign country, only to discover that it doesn’t seem so foreign. And you realize that the place you live actually IS extremely foreign.

That’s what happened to me during the last week, when I toured Germany to read from my third Palestinian rime novel THE SAMARITAN’S…

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Added by Matt Rees on March 26, 2010 at 12:34am — 1 Comment

Self Publishing: Good or Evil?

http://mitziszereto.com/blog/self-publishing-good-or-evil/

Added by Mitzi Szereto on March 25, 2010 at 3:01am — No Comments

The fight scene

Aw, the fight scene. I've got three of them and I just wrote them to get through it. Now I have to go back and make it right. So I looked it up on the internet, my one-stop shop, and came up with good advice from many different sources. You get conflicting advice,…

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Added by E.A. McKenzie on March 19, 2010 at 2:30am — 8 Comments

Miranda Phillips Walker gets jiggy with the Spirit World!

Coming Soon, Check out mine and Robert W. Walker's Short Story Contribution.

Added by Miranda Phillips Walker on March 14, 2010 at 10:51am — No Comments

Coffee cultures of Israelis, Palestinians...and Hawaiians

>I have a lot of good reasons for staying in the Middle East as long as I have. While the main thing keeping me here 14 years and counting may truly be inertia, I also enjoy being an outsider, researching my Palestinian crime novels on site, visiting the Palestinian towns whose atmosphere of violence, decay and liveliness makes me feel so creative.

But let’s get down to brass tacks: I’m here for the coffee.

There’s no…

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Added by Matt Rees on March 4, 2010 at 5:00pm — No Comments

How to Get That Deer-In-The-Headlights-Look on Lauren's Face

I just read my friend Sunny Frazier’s informative post, Welcome to Your World about a writer’s pet peeve: Meeting people who say they have a book in them, but are just too busy to write it. If you are a budding writer who simply can’t seem to get your book on paper, I suggest you read it.

This week I have been dealing with my own writer’s pet peeve:…

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Added by Lauren Carr on February 27, 2010 at 6:01am — No Comments

The Writer's Life (A Case for the Humble Bin Man)

http://mitziszereto.com/blog/the-writers-life-a-case-for-the-humble-bin-man/

Added by Mitzi Szereto on February 25, 2010 at 11:37pm — No Comments

Inventing the Palestinian detective

The dead man's mother raged and cried as she told me how she’d discovered her son’s body, in the cabbage patch outside her home. She’d gone down on her knees, she said, touched his blood and wiped her fingers on her face and called out that God is most great.

As the wind came winter cold off the Judean Desert, I watched her weep and thought: “I have to write a novel about this.”

Forgive me if that sounds heartless, but I’m a…

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Added by Matt Rees on February 25, 2010 at 4:52pm — 1 Comment

Espionage is a dirty business

You’d think there was something very wrong with spying.

People pay good money to watch Daniel Craig dispose of villains in the bloodiest fashion. They nod in approval when M pushes 007’s perfect false passport across the desk. Yet everyone’s peeved about what in all likelihood is a Mossad hit against a Hamas operative in his Dubai hotel room on January…

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Added by Matt Rees on February 19, 2010 at 4:48pm — 3 Comments

The strange world of PR, vital to authors

The strange world of PR is always looking for angles, because it's the strongest angle that will grab the headline, or at least get some coverage in the media. And authors need PR as much as actors, artists, and anyone else in the creative industries.

Press, or rather I should say media coverage is a hugely cost effective way of spreading a message, and now with the multitude of Internet media it is even more powerful. But there is a vast difference between pumping…

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Added by Pauline Rowson on February 15, 2010 at 11:19pm — 2 Comments

Why's a Palestinian sleuth in Brooklyn?

I’ve been called the Dashiell Hammett of Palestine, the John Le Carre of the Middle East, the James Ellroy of…Palestine, the Graham Greene of Jerusalem, and the Georges Simenon of the Palestinian refugee camps. Depends which review you happen to have read.

I’ve written three previous crime novels about Omar Yussef, my Palestinian schoolteacher/sleuth. Omar has been called the Philip Marlowe of the Arab street, the Hercules Poirot of the Near East, Sam Spade fed…

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Added by Matt Rees on February 12, 2010 at 5:50pm — No Comments

NETDRAG Crime Fiction Podcast

YOU'VE BEEN BOOKED! THIS PODCAST SPONSORED BY KRILL PRESS, AND HOSTED BY YOURS TRULY, FEATURES INTERVIEWS WITH MYSTERY, SUSPENSE, THRILLER, AND CRIME FICTION AUTHORS AND THEIR FANS.

http://netdrag.mypodcast.com/fbrss.xml

Added by K.R. Lewis on February 8, 2010 at 2:18am — No Comments

Writer declares he's pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli

The best thing about switching from journalism to fiction writing is that people show you more respect.

As a journalist covering a highly contentious issue like the Israel-Palestinian conflict, I was often subject to rather nasty verbal attacks during public speaking engagements. For a partisan of either side, I seemed a fine target for their generalized contempt—they thought journalists were all against them and here was a live reporter on whom they could vent their… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on January 15, 2010 at 5:22pm — No Comments