All Blog Posts Tagged 'writers' (59)

Beckham guest posts on my crime blog

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Added by Matt Rees on December 31, 2009 at 8:27pm — No Comments

Setting up an author blog

Because I’m such a hip and happening author, I’m redoing my blog. A… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on December 24, 2009 at 11:02pm — No Comments

Robin Burcell is coming to Introducing WRITERS! radio show

You heard it here first! Robin Burcell will be on IW in January to promote her latest book The Bone Chamber. If you are a Burcell fan, you do not want to miss this show! If you haven't read any of her works, check out The Bone Chamber! It is a great one. Show date: January 18, 2010 Where: Blogtalk Radio show Introducing WRITERS! with Kim Smith http://www.blogtalkradio.com/kims Continue

Added by Kim Smith on December 19, 2009 at 7:53pm — No Comments

Ass-backwards on Gays

When it comes to homosexuals, Palestinians have it all ass-backwards. That led… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on December 3, 2009 at 11:58pm — 4 Comments

Scene of the Crime

I went back to the spot where I killed my first man yesterday. I killed him four years ago. I return every few months. Each time I arrive, it’s so peaceful I can’t believe anyone really died. But, even though I’m a writer of crime fiction, someone really did. I walked across a dirt lot, puddled with the afternoon rain, past the empty reservoir at the head of the valley. Below me the village of Irtas drifted down toward the convent where they hold the annual lettuce festival. The buildings finge… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on November 26, 2009 at 11:59pm — No Comments

National Crime Fiction Week 2010

The Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain, (CWA) of which I am a member, has launched a new intiative for 2010 with the introduction of National Crime Fiction Week, taking place from 14 June to 20 June 2010. It is designed to raise the profile of crime fiction further, already a popular genre in the UK, and will be a celebration of crime writing. During the week members of the CWA, including yours truly, will take part in readings, discussions, readers' group events and work… Continue

Added by Pauline Rowson on November 24, 2009 at 12:56am — No Comments

Researching the novel

Novelists aren’t journalists. Research for a novel isn’t the same as researching a journalistic article. I’d have thought that was too obvious to need stating. But then I became a published novelist, and I realized that people thought the two things were rather the same. I was a journalist for almost 20 years before my first novel was published. THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM is a crime novel set in Bethlehem during the intifada, and I’d spent over a decade covering the Palestinians by the time… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on November 20, 2009 at 1:07am — 1 Comment

CRAFTING TWISTS AND DROPPING CLUES

Today I gave a mini version to the Las Vegas Quill Keepers of the workshop I'll be presenting at the Las Vegas Writers Conference in April 2010...in...where else? Las Vegas. The title is "Crafting Twists and Dropping Clues." It was very well received, so I can't wait to present it complete with Power Point and a short interactive workshop. While preparing the presentation, I realized that one of my all-time favorite Twist and Clue movies was "The Usual Suspects." I revisited it and wow---did I… Continue

Added by Morgan St. James on November 15, 2009 at 2:21pm — No Comments

Looking for somewhere to kill someone: suggestions please

I’m always looking for a good spot in which to kill someone. Still, as a crime writer, I rarely have to ask about potential locations for a good murder. People are keen to suggest that the blood be spilled on their doorstep. Most recently, it was a pastor and his wife. To be fair, they actually said I ought to have my Palestinian detective Omar Yussef visit their church on the top of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, where I live. But when I noted admiringly that it’d be a great place for a mu… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on November 5, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments

No more Mister Nice Guy

This is where it gets ugly. Last week I zapped off the manuscript of my new novel to my agent in New York. My wife told me to get working on the next book. It’s not because she’s worried about me slacking off and failing to pay the rent. No, it’s because she knows what happens when I’m not writing. Ever read “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”? When I’m writing, I’m Dr Jekyll. All my unloveable urges are intellectualized and subsumed to a pleasure in the creative impulse. As soon as I… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 29, 2009 at 4:43pm — No Comments

Good news for crime writers

Crime writers in the UK in particular will be pleased to learn that The Times has linked with CrimeFest for 2010 to provide media coverage. The increased publicity this will bring for the genre is to be welcomed. The Times will also be covering the Crime Writers Association (CWA) Dagger awards, which includes the CWA Dagger in the Library, which yours truly was delighted to be long listed for in 2008. Since it first came to the UK in 2008 CrimeFest has become an increasingly impor… Continue

Added by Pauline Rowson on October 29, 2009 at 3:27am — No Comments

PSWA CONFERENCE

The Public Safety Writers Conference 2010 will be held from June 17 through June 20 in Las Vegas at the Orleans Hotel and Convention Center in Las Vegas. Our headliner this year is the wonderful crime fiction and horror writer, Simon Wood. is going to talk about Creating Suspense. Michael A. Black will give us a lesson in putting together a plot in an hour. Forensic expert, Steve Scarborough, is returning, and I'm going to speak on “How Much Sex Is Too Much?” in the mystery genre. Next year's c… Continue

Added by Sunny Frazier on October 23, 2009 at 7:08am — No Comments

“ME” doesn’t stand for Middle East

One of the advantages of being an author in an “exotic” locale is that people visit and want to hear from you as someone who knows the place well. It’s also one of the disadvantages. Last Friday night, I drove out to Ein Kerem to meet one such group of visitors from Reboot, a U.S. organization that brings together mostly liberal – and certainly not conventional-thinking – Jews to discuss issues related to Judaism and Israel. It turned out to be one of tho… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 22, 2009 at 5:48pm — 3 Comments

The Poet and the Prose-ist, II

Some things that came to mind as I listened to Billy Collins talk about being a poet and writing in general: Poets start from scratch more often. Whether that's good or bad I can't say, but the novelist has a thread to follow for months, even years, while the poet faces a blank page every day or two. Poets are allowed to break the rules of writing (such as they are). Playing with language in encouraged. Novelists have more of a job to do, a goal to reach, less time for wordplay, even with more… Continue

Added by Peg Herring on October 20, 2009 at 10:27pm — No Comments

Location, location

Writers live in their heads. What may be travel to you is location-scouting for me. In some ways, I’m never where I am. I’m imagining that place on the page in a future book. It won’t exist until I’ve written about it. I was standing on a deserted bridge across the Rhine in the Swiss town of Rheinfelden a couple of weeks ago in the evening twilight. The river flowed very fast. The rain was steady. It patterned the field-grey surface of the water in scattered patches, so that it seemed as though… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 15, 2009 at 6:29pm — 1 Comment

Leselust! Reading to Germans

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog: When authors travel to promote their books in the US and UK, they’ve given up on referring to their appearances as “readings.” Now they’re “events.” Because no one wants to hear an author read. It could be because authors aren’t such compelling readers or because many of the biggest-selling authors don’t actually write their own books (I assume they usually read… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 8, 2009 at 6:13pm — 3 Comments

Moore's new Thailand noir

Christopher G. Moor… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 7, 2009 at 5:29pm — No Comments

Scared away

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog: I keep finding new reasons why I write my novels about the Palestinians. Usually these reasons have nothing to do with the Palestinians. Here’s the one that may be the deepest, the one I’ve known about for a while, but have only recently been able to face up to: it’s because I’m scared of home. Not so long ago, I read the 1992 novel “Fat Lad” by Northern Irish n… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on September 10, 2009 at 7:02pm — No Comments

Acknowledge no one

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog: Authors are posturing, self-aggrandizing assholes. At least, that’s the conclusion I’ve reached after noting the trend for excessive “Acknowledgements” growing like mold over page on page of nonfiction books. These days they’re spreading their blight all over novels, too. Here’s how I think it breaks down. More than a few paragraphs of Acknowledgements in nonfic… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on September 3, 2009 at 11:36pm — 5 Comments

My bogus bio

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog: Since you’re reading this, you don’t care who I am. So I can be anyone I like. At least, that’s what somebody wrote here recently. I posted on this blog a couple of weeks ago about Dashiell Hammett. I noted that, while a university literature student, I grew tired of all the post- structuralist and deconstructionist and Marxist esoterica I was studying. I picked… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on August 27, 2009 at 4:13pm — 4 Comments