I had great news recently. My short story The Ripper Legacy is in a new anthology published by Robinson/Little Brown on November 12. The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper Stories, edited by Maxim Jacubowski, includes stories by M. Christian, Carol Anne Davis, Stephen Dedman, Martin Edwards, Peter Gutteridge, William Meikle, Barbara Nadel, Nicky Peacock, Vanessa de Sade, Sarah…

Unlike many Saturday mornings, I didn't have a topic I'd been mulling over in my head this week. I went through my journal and all I had left were more nostalgia pieces, most of which will show up sometime, but I felt like I'd inflicted enough of my childhood on you. So, thanks to Molly Greene, author of the blog Molly Greene: Author and her post "101 Fabulous Blog…

Chase Baker II is here. The followup to The Shroud Key which Suspense Magazine hailed with 5-Stars, Chase Baker and the Golden Condor is a full of action, romance, and a whole lot of crime down in the Amazon Jungle where life is precious but death is all too easy.…

Happy pub day to me! My original novel based on the television series The Killing publishes today! 

When firefighters respond to a suspected meth explosion at a trailer park, they discover a man’s body in a neighboring trailer, unburned but with terrible head wounds. The meth cooker lies in critical condition, and undercover narcotics officer Stephen…

Over a hundred people turned out to hear me talk about my flawed and rugged detective, DI Andy Horton on 11 June at Solent U3A.  I entertained members of the audience with tales of the dogged Portsmouth cop and explained how I plot, research and write my crime novels set on the South Coast of England.…

http://mitziszereto.com/blog/dorian-gray-strikes-again-riding-the-wave-of-decadence-with-penny-dreadful/

This week there is the chance to win a copy of DI Andy Horton number eight, Death Lies Beneath, which is being offered on the Crime Readers Association (CRA)…

On Thursday 20 February I was delighted to entertain the volunteers of the Southampton and District National Trust.



I talked about the inspiration behind the DI Andy Horton series of crime novels, where I get my ideas from, and how I write the…

I had great time entertaining the ladies of the Young at Heart Club (part of Brandon Care) on Wednesday 5 February. They certainly lived up to their name. They were a very lively bunch.

Against the backdrop of fierce winds, torrential rain and thunder I talked about murder mystery and mayhem. Very appropriate

I spoke of how I get the ideas for my…

There are a lot of people who view all sub-plots with the gravest suspicion, regarding them at best as a pointless distraction from the main business at hand, and, at worst, as a dangerously amateurish self-indulgence.  Kill your darlings, they screech like dogma-drilled harpies, kill, kill, kill them all!  Needless to say, I disagree.

In a general sense, I’m all in favour of sub-plots.  In fact, I delight in them.  They offer so many exciting possibilities to writers of…

One of the many smaller pleasures of writing fiction is the fun to be derived from choosing the names of your characters.  There’s a lot of joy in nailing down the perfect name for your maverick cop/cerebral private detective/vampire overlord/super-soldier from Planet Zap, and just as much amusement in bestowing the names of people you dislike upon the seedy/degenerate/evil characters currently paddling around in the shallow end of your WIP’s gene pool.  But the truth is that the more you…

Of course, I've always known this.  It's a rare day when I write something that works perfectly first time.  More often than not, everyday stresses and concerns intrude on my writing time, meaning that my mind is never as focused as I would wish it to be.  The end result is that I not only write sentences back to front, I also write paragraphs inside out, and write them in the wrong order, too.  It's like my mind has all the information it needs to write the story, but because there's so…

The Controversial Life of a Book: The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray is now at Errant Ramblings: Mitzi Szereto's Weblog.

http://mitziszereto.com/blog/the-controversial-life-of-a-book-the-wilde-passions-of-dorian-gray/

More indebtedness incurred by author Earl Merkel, rapidly becoming known as "the Greece of the Writing World"-- this from the lovely Lis Wiehl, who writes the "Triple Threat Club" mystery series when she's not doing legal analysis on television:

"If you're at loose ends waiting for Showtime's HOMELAND to return next fall FIRE OF THE PROPHET by Earl Merkel is your salvation. It's…

Gordon Griffin is the narrator of the unabridged audio books in the DI Andy Horton series . Gordon is the voice of DI Andy Horton and the other characters in the Horton novels and is currently recording Footsteps on the Shore. This will be followed by A Killing…

CrimeFest 13 was buzzing. It was great to catch up with some of my fellow crime writers, meet lots of lovely crime fiction fans and meet up with my publisher, Severn House.

The panel session on Friday morning was well received by a lively audience and my In the Spotlight Session later the same morning where I talked about "The Perfect System for Writing a Crime Novel" was standing room only.…

Title:  OUT OF THE SILENCE

Author: Wendy James

ISBN:  B00BMFEUPS

Year of Publication:  2013

Publisher:  Momentum Books

Location:  Melbourne



Book Synopsis



I call his name – only quietly, but he hears me as I knew he would, and wants me as he always does. And we come together – right there in the darkness. And even though there is no way to be certain of any other thing in the world, I am certain that I would risk anything to keep what is between the two…

Book Title:   MURDER WITH THE LOT

Author:  Sue Williams

ISBN: 9781922079787

Series: Cass Tuplin

Year of Publication: 2013

Publisher: Text Publishing

Location: Mallee, Victoria



Synopsis



A smart, sassy self-appointed private investigator, Cass Tuplin is unforgettable and the town of Rusty Bore will never be the same...



Cass Tuplin's takeaway isn't the last shop left in Rusty Bore. There's also Vern's General Store. But it's true the town's not…

At the weekend I finished writing DI Andy Horton number ten. It's always a scary moment when I press 'send' on the keyboard and a new crime novel wings its way through the ether to my publisher, Severn House. I wonder could I have done better? Should I have rephrased something or added or omitted something? But it's done. Now I wait to see if my publisher likes it. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile it's on with…

Book Title:  I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET

Author: Adrian McKinty

ISBN:  9781846688188

Year of Publication: 2013

Publisher:  Allen & Unwin

Series:  Sean Duffy

Location: Ireland

Category: Crime Fiction / Police Procedural / Historical



Synopsis:



Detective Inspector Sean Duffy returns for the incendiary sequel to The Cold Cold Ground.



Sean Duffy knows there's no such thing as a perfect crime. But a torso in a suitcase is pretty close.…