or I'm Getting Tired of Swimming Back to the Island



(Warning: Content May Be Harmful to Unpublished Writers)*



Posted by Kate Flora



I appreciated Elizabeth Becka’s honest post last week because, for most us, there are too many reasons not to tell the truth. Most of those reasons are obvious: we don’t tell the truth because this publishing world we inhabit is a very small one, and we don’t want to say or do anything which might have a negative impact on our… Continue

Posted by Sheila Connolly

When you're trying to get your name out there in cyberspace, as we struggling writers are told we must do, you learn very quickly that you are not unique. Picking web domain names, for example, brings that home quickly. I was lucky to snag my own name for my primary site, but my alter ego Sarah Atwell was already taken (by a real estate agent in California) so I had to tweak it.

For those of you who haven't discovered the joys of Google…

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Please join us on Saturday, February 16, when author Elizabeth Becka joins Writers Plot to discuss what happens when the second book in your mystery series is rejected by your publisher--and the snowball effect that can have on a writer's career.

Don't miss this intriguing--and rather frightening--post.

Elizabeth Becka is the author of TRACE…

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By Guest Blogger Karen Harper

Escape the winter blahs! A $7 getaway to romance and thrills in sunny south Florida!

OK, I didn’t mean to get carried away with hype. I really do have something a bit deeper to say about my new book and the craft/art of writing in general.

Readers (and my own 86-year-old mother!) often ask me where I get ideas for my novels. I guess they think, with a 25-year writing career and 46 novels to my name, I’ll run out of plots…

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posted by Leann Sweeney

Ever have one of those moments when you're all alone, you're watching the tube and a couple things come together that just make you grin like a donkey with a mouth full of prickers? That's what happened to me as I watched this week's episode of Murder by the Book on TruTV. Formerly Court TV. Those of you who've been to Wrtiers Plot before might remember how much I love Court TV, might recall a post I did on the Phil Spector trial. I think that…

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posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken



Reading Kate's blog about riding around on police patrols, I have been struck by the difference between a small city like Portland and a much smaller town like Littleton.



Every state probably has a Littleton, but if you're keeping track, I'm talking Massachusetts here.



We have a weekly newspaper called…

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Posted by Kate Flora

When I was a much younger writer, I thought writers sat at their desks and made things up. I never realized how much research a writer—especially a mystery writer whose work is going fall under the coolly critical and educated eye of the passionate mystery fan—needed to do in order to get things right.

That was many years ago, back before I spent ten years in the unpublished writer's corner. Back before I made my first tentative phone call to set up…

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Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett

Saturday I arrived at the Craft Antique Co-Op and Grammy G's cafe to do some down-and-dirty research. See, in my next book one of my characters wants to open a lunchtime cafe. My friend Gail owns Grammy G's--a lunchtime cafe. So on Saturday I turned up to "observe" what goes on in such an establishment.

I arrived with big round eyes and ready to take on…

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Posted by Sheila Connolly

Lorraine's post last week started me thinking about how I choose what my characters look like. The thing is, I don't have a single answer. And for some of them, I have only a vague idea what they look like, even when I've written an entire book about them.

My first heroine was easy: she looked like Jodie Foster. In contrast, her love interest in that (shelved) book I never did quite visualize. I think he was Mister Average,…

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By Guest Blogger Lesa Holstine

I love authors. I’ve always said they’re my rock stars. I’d cross the street to see an author any day before a movie star or celebrity, with the exception of George Clooney. (Then my husband and I are racing each other across the road.) I admire the way authors use words and develop ideas and plots. And, nowadays, I admire their skill in public speaking and self-promotion.

As a public librarian, I feel that authors and librarians have a…

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