Nothing like getting stuck on the third chapter with 43 more to go. There's no time for my usual strategy either. Can't walk away from a first draft that's peppered with holes while a six-month deadline looms over my head.

Okay, here's the deal. A third body just washed to shore, I'm in the morgue, and the medical examiner swears he's found some evidence. I can't see it--I've tried but it's not there. Not yet anyway.

I'm too restless--distracted easily by the dumbest things. I…

Somewhere between the first novel I wrote (that I never finished because it was the first novel I wrote and I didn't know what the heck I was doing), and the initial writing of my Harper crime mystery series, I wrote several short stories and a few flash fictions. At the time my only purpose for writing them was to use them as a writing exercise to help me focus on developing the plot and to tighten my…

Okay, I know I’m not telling anyone here anything new. But this post was prompted by what happened last night vs. a (rediculous) thread I read a while back (not here) questioning the need to research.

For me, research is an on-going process. I may only need the information for a sentence or two, but it has to be right, right? Some things I know I’ll need to check ahead of time before…