All Blog Posts Tagged 'new' (85)

Crime writing can be a messy process

So I have the idea. I do some research. I work it up into an outline plot with a smattering of characters and then I start writing. This is when it gets messy.

1. The brain dump or free flow

First up is the free flow type of writing when I'm eager to bring the idea and characters to life by getting words and actions on to my computer screen as quickly as possible. Often these are not the correct words, the description is hazy, the characters not fully formed, the grammar and… Continue

Added by Pauline Rowson on February 1, 2011 at 1:41am — No Comments

The tsunami of Social Media and how it can shape your career!

Hi all, Tim Hallinan did a very nice interview on the how and why I created All Mystery e-newsletter. If any of you are interested in how the tsunami of social media is taking charge of how books are promoted now, read this: http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/?p=3288

Added by R P Dahlke on January 15, 2011 at 2:14am — No Comments

REVIEW OF 1/1: JIHAD - BRITAIN BY DAVID COLES AND JACK EVERETT

Review by Geraldine Evans

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I found it impossible to put down and really wanted to know what happened next. The action moves from country to country in the build-up to the 1/1 New Year terrorist tragedies. With thousands dead at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists, the UK government has no answers. We watch as the Islamic fanatics plot more terror. It's time for a new party, a radical party, the Independents, led by Francis Raike, who promises…

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Added by Geraldine Evans on December 30, 2010 at 9:29pm — No Comments

THE HOUSE ON BLACKSTONE MOOR IS IN THE TOP HORROR RELEASES AT SMASHWORDS!

Is that great or what?!

TOP HORROR RELEASES:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/category/883

READ 50 PERCENT FREE AND CHECK IT OUT!…

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Added by carole gill on December 21, 2010 at 2:19am — No Comments

THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY

People often ask authors where their ideas come from. I speak not for others, but as for me--not a clue most of the time.

THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY, my January release, seems to have stemmed from a conversation I had with my son, a Merrill Lynch VP. He mentioned that he had fired one of their employees for selling away. I asked what that was, and he explained. It took root somewhere in my head, and the idea for a mystery formed.

Where the dead part came from, I could not tell…

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Added by Peg Herring on December 20, 2010 at 11:03pm — No Comments

Love and the crime novel

The crime novel tradition seems to have little connection to love. Maybe sometimes love in a perverse sense is the spur to the murder at the heart of most crime novels – the spurned husband killing his wife, for example. But usually the detective is a loveless loner, pining without much hope like the great Marlowe for his true love to come along.

As I write more novels, I’ve noticed that love is at the heart of crime fiction. At least, mine,…

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Added by Matt Rees on October 14, 2010 at 5:56pm — 3 Comments

Paving Zion to put up a parking lot

Intifada fans can breathe a little more easily.

Just when it seemed as though no amount of building in Israel’s settlements and harsh statements at the United Nations by the country’s foreign minister could truly provoke new violence between Israelis and Palestinians, the Jerusalem municipality came up with something guaranteed to steam up some hotheads.

The city’s planning committee is considering a proposal to build an…

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Added by Matt Rees on October 12, 2010 at 12:00am — No Comments

Hezbollah's rapture, resistance, and revolution

Here's my review of A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel — by Thanassis Cambanis (Free Press).

Most books on Hezbollah tend to focus, in one way or another, on the Lebanese Shia group’s fundamentalist politics. That’s in contrast to what strikes you as a journalist when you travel to southern Lebanon, one of the Hezbollah heartlands. There the greatest impressions are visceral. The earthquake of an Israeli…

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Added by Matt Rees on October 6, 2010 at 1:14am — No Comments

Going historical

Writing of the disdain expressed for genre novels by critics, Raymond Chandler said that there were just as many bad “literary novels” of the type favored by critics as there were bad genre stories – except that the bad literary novels didn’t get published. In other words, there’s nothing inherent in so-called genre fiction that makes it lesser than “literary” fiction.

Chandler knew what he was talking about. His great noir novels, such as “The Big Sleep”…

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Added by Matt Rees on September 1, 2010 at 6:06pm — 1 Comment

Israel Museum gets funky

I was the first journalist to interview James Snyder when he arrived in 1997 from a sinecure at New York's Museum of Modern Art to head the Israel Museum, the country's premier cultural institution.

Snyder had neat white hair, a trim build encased in a seersucker suit, and a black tie. This, in a land where dressing up means putting on a T-shirt that has sleeves. As I listened to his East Coast drawl, I took one look at him and figured he wouldn’t…

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Added by Matt Rees on August 5, 2010 at 12:32am — No Comments

Trauma psych meets crime writing

Please welcome author and psychologist Dennis Palumbo to Suspense Your Disbelief! Dennis contributes a Moment to the Made It Moments forums, talking about his exciting new series just out from Poisoned Pen Press--as well as past experiences from his life, like writing for the TV show, Welcome Back, Kotter.

Discover a new book, a new crime author, and hopefully a new blog :)…

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Added by Jenny Milchman on August 2, 2010 at 6:08am — No Comments

Read international crime fiction instead, World Cup fans

World Cup fans, don’t fear hours of emptiness. Take up a work by an international crime fiction author. It’s the perfect replacement for your lost fix – and it’s a lot better for your soul, too.

Here’s why. As the World Cup unfolded over the last month, newspapers all over the globe were filled with articles in which journalists extrapolated from aspects of the play and team-make up of various countries to draw lessons about the politics and sociology of those…

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Added by Matt Rees on July 16, 2010 at 9:18pm — No Comments

Save me, Middle Eastern ladies, from the nightmare of the World Cup

The women of the Middle East are about to save me from the greatest banality known to man. I’m counting on them to care as little about the the World Cup as I do and to keep me entertained until men can once again talk about something other than the groin of volatile England player Wayne Rooney (it's strained and tender, apparently...).

Though I’ve long loved to play soccer, I scorn the watching of its endless buildup passes, the constant disappointment of a…

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Added by Matt Rees on June 11, 2010 at 12:48am — 1 Comment

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

Crazy Crime Headlines a Source for Ideas

I’m author Victoria Roder and as an author, the world around me is an endless opportunity for writing material. Everything I see, touch, taste, hear, and observe is ripe for the picking. My friend Denny gave me a t-shirt that reads, Be Careful What You Say. You Might be in My Novel.…

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Added by Victoria Roder on May 24, 2010 at 8:26am — 1 Comment

Jimmy Carter, apartheid, hemorrhoids and Matt Beynon Rees

I often receive emails from book stores, amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and online literary sites telling me how much I’d like the novels of Matt Beynon Rees. I’m delighted to see these emails, which are based on my other purchases and interests, as only I can truly know just how much the novels of Matt Beynon Rees have changed my life. (Try them, I’m sure you’ll agree.)

Of course, I also get the occasional email informing me that if I like Matt Beynon…

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Added by Matt Rees on May 21, 2010 at 12:42am — 1 Comment

Scribe and Scholar enter world of Hamas

Stephen Farrell was sipping coffee in the office of his money changer on Salah ud-Din Street, East Jerusalem’s main commercial strip, four years ago, when Beverley Milton-Edwards entered. From his rucksack, Farrell produced a copy of a book about Islamic militants written by the Queens University Belfast professor.

“Your book saved my life when I was kidnapped in Iraq,” he said, referring to a brief period of captivity by militants in Baghdad in 2004…

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Added by Matt Rees on April 25, 2010 at 7:59pm — No Comments

Bibi’s Bedtime Book: The Secret Diary of Prime Minister Netanyahu #2

I can’t believe the extent of the corruption being uncovered in Israel’s government.

My predecessor as Prime Minister moped home from vacation yesterday – without any envelopes stuffed with cash, as far as we know -- and made a weepy statement about yet another police probe into bribery and fraud and breach of trust on his part. He’s alleged to have been in cahoots with a bunch of shady property developers, lawyers and municipal officials, so that a big, tacky…

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Added by Matt Rees on April 17, 2010 at 12:14am — No Comments

A who's who of Israeli corruption

JERUSALEM — The heads of all the crime families in New York used to get together every Wednesday night at the Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. If you were looking for an Israeli parallel, you could do worse than the gym I work out at.

The Cybex Club at the David’s Citadel Hotel has a nice view of the Ottoman walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. It’s also where the legal, political and business elite come to sweat (actually, being Israelis, they…

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Added by Matt Rees on April 11, 2010 at 11:20pm — No Comments

New Orleans Noir: Clean Hands and Tipped Scales

Have a taste for Crystal sauce, bayou mysteries or Big Easy gangbangers? I have just the thing for your bad appetites: I write New Orleans Noir.

My most recently published work is "Clean Hands and Tipped Scales" at ThugLit, Issue #36. An excerpt is below:

“Somebody tell you this banger was smoking a joint when he got jumped?”

Detective Sergeant Ferraris smells like the bad gumbo…

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Added by M C Funk on April 8, 2010 at 5:29am — 2 Comments