All Blog Posts Tagged 'writers' (184)

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… 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… 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… Continue

Added by Pauline Rowson on October 29, 2009 at 3:27am — 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… 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… 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… 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… Continue

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

Moore's new Thailand noir

Christopher G. Moore has book 10 in his terrific Vincent Calvino crime series out this week. "Paying Back Jack", which will be out in December in the UK. I love the Calvino series for the way it leads the reader into the underbelly of Bangkok in the company of its Italian-Jewish New Yorker private eye. PBJ gives us that… 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… 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… 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… Continue

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

My latest culture clash

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:

The Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family is a beautiful sandstone building on the corner where the Via Dolorosa turns briefly onto the main alley of the Muslim Quarter’s souq. Buzz at the main gate, climb up two flights of enclosed steps, and you’re in a palm-shaded garden fronting a broad, four-story façade. Nearly 150 years old, it was built for… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on August 21, 2009 at 1:44am — No Comments

Whose Abu are you?

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:

In the West, our names tend to be pretty nailed down and unvaried. Unless you’re the child of some Hollywood goof who named you Moon Unit or Pilot Inspektor, you’re likely to share your name with many other people. Take me, for example. The family name Rees accounts for 15 percent of Welsh people – not to mention people descended from Welsh immigrants… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on August 14, 2009 at 12:38am — No Comments

The Last Man in London

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:

During my teens, my family lived in a house in Addington, at the very farthest reach of South London. At the bottom of the hill, the road made its final exit from London. Not quite wide enough for two cars, it traveled onto the North Downs of Kent. Sometimes I would ride my bike along the lane and up a hill overlooking the Downs and lie on the grass. I… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on August 6, 2009 at 4:44pm — 2 Comments

Peerscribe.com

Hi everyone,

I need your help with something… As a struggling novelist, I thought it would be cool to have an online space to kick around ideas, communicate with other writers, and workshop and practice my writing. What me and my old college roommate came up with is Peerscribe.com, a social network where you can use Web publishing tools to share your writing, find or create workshops that help you develop your skills, and gain legal ownership of your works in the… Continue

Added by Bryan on July 31, 2009 at 11:57pm — No Comments

Language textbooks and the crime writer

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:

You can tell a great deal about a people from the conversations in language textbooks. After all, they aim to teach you the words people speak, but also the character of those teaching them and what it might be like to live in their society.

I first cottoned to this when I learned Spanish. My textbook included a basic conversation between a… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on July 30, 2009 at 8:55pm — No Comments

Win a copy of my book

I've been writing for a new blog founded by me and three other crime writers. One of them, the ever-inventive Christopher G. Moore, came up with the idea for a competition. He got the idea after I suggested in a blog post last week that my Palestinian detective character Omar Yussef ought to stand for Palestinian president. Here's what Chris wrote on the blog and how to enter:

A Contest for Readers of The International Crime Authors… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on July 30, 2009 at 8:52pm — No Comments

Omar Yussef for President of Palestine!

My latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:

Unlike the Palestinians (who don’t have one), Palestinian politics is in a real state. A civil war that’s been bubbling and sometimes burning for two years plus. No government in Gaza because Hamas, which rules there, is isolated. Accusations by a top PLO official that current Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had his predecessor Yasser Arafat… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on July 24, 2009 at 7:28pm — No Comments

Ready, Set, Action: Useful Websites for Mystery Writers!

Here is a list of a few of my favorite websites I use when writing a mystery:

http://www.crime-scene-investigator.net/csi-response.html Includes Crime Scene Investigation resources, training, articles and links to forensic web pages.

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/forensics.shtml Comprehensive resource covering forensic identification.

http://www.terryburns.net/COPS_CRIME.htm Articles related to crime scene investigations, physical… Continue

Added by Miranda Phillips Walker on July 23, 2009 at 2:24pm — No Comments

Clitoris follows vagina on Cotterill blog

I've joined up with a few other crime writers to fill a single blog, International Crime Authors Reality Check, with original content. Last week Colin Cotterill wrote about his attempt to get a "vagina" into the title of one of his novels. This week, Colin has a hilarious post about his bemusing appearance at the Crime Writers Association's Daggers dinner -- at which Colin was… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on July 20, 2009 at 10:47pm — No Comments