There's only you and me, and we just disagree. (Okay, now sing that one in your head for the rest of the day!)
Just finished a book where the guy the protagonist was trying to clear of murder charges turned out to really have done the crime, with no mitigating circumstances. He was a stone killer who used everyone, including the protag, and deserved no sympathy at all. In addition, the nasty psychopath who we all wanted to have done the crime did a "good deed" murder as a favor at…
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Added by Peg Herring on July 16, 2009 at 10:53pm —
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The new blog I've started with fellow crime writers Christopher G. Moore, Colin Cotterill and Barbara Nadel has a new post from me today. It's about why I came to write so-called genre fiction. It starts like this:
Writers have it all wrong. They think they need to learn about other writers. I studied English literature at Oxford University and I read all I could find of the sort of literary criticism that makes a novel seem like a piece of East German economic analysis. Three years…
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Added by Matt Rees on July 16, 2009 at 9:10pm —
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Julie McGuire gazed intently from her table in the filled-to-capacity dining room of the Wyndham Hotel. The Love To Murder Mystery Conference had saved the best for last. New York Times bestselling author, Tyler Jensen, now approached the podium.
His entire bearing commanded attention, from his shoulder length wavy chestnut hair pushed back behind his ears, to his sexy sideburns and piercing hazel eyes. She guessed him to be thirty-five, about five years older than she. Clever, rich, tall,…
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Added by Morgan Mandel on July 16, 2009 at 2:40pm —
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Do you ever check the trees to see what is up there?
You would be surprised at what you can find.
Over at
Powder Burn Flash.com, Aldo Calcagno has posted a story of mine concerning the once in a lifetime things that a teenager has discovered in
"The… Continue
Added by Cormac Brown on July 16, 2009 at 2:33pm —
2 Comments
(Also posted in
One Bite at a Time.)
I recently discovered the Editorial Ass blog; lots of good stuff there.
This post is a few weeks old, but interesting.
Any thoughts?
Added by Dana King on July 16, 2009 at 6:55am —
7 Comments
I’ve always enjoyed
Elmore Leonard’s novels and seen him as one of the true stylists of popular fiction. In a review, I even described my pal
Christopher G. Moore as the “Elmore Leonard of Bangkok” and I meant it as a compliment. But I have a bone to pick with the great Elmore.
I just read a book of Elmore’s short stories from 2004 titled “When the Women Come Out to Dance.” In many ways it’s superb. The…
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Added by Matt Rees on July 15, 2009 at 10:59pm —
13 Comments
There is nothing new to say. We all need to accept that. Every plot, every character, every phrase we use can be found somewhere else if we know where to look. George Carlin used to play around with concocting sentences no one had ever used before, like "Hand me that piano," and I guess there are exceptions of that type, but they're hardly useful in actually writing a story.
The problem, then, is that sometimes we reach too far in trying to come up with a new way of expressing…
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Added by Peg Herring on July 15, 2009 at 10:35pm —
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Hi. I spent most of July 3rd drawing and creating in Flash a Fourth of July cartoon featuring my character, Crazy Cal, dancing on top of a fire cracker with fireworks popping behind him. I was working in Flash CS4 for the first time and was having some difficulty adjusting to the new upgrade. So I was up till 3AM on the 4th, posting my cartoon. Tested it out on a MAC and PC and "YIKES" doesn't show in the browsers. At 3AM I wasn't in any mental state to figure out what was wrong. Well, my .swf…
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Added by Dawn M. Kravagna on July 15, 2009 at 3:35pm —
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My favorite little coffee shop in Jerusalem’s Old City is just inside the Muslim Quarter, behind the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus is believed to have been crucified, buried and resurrected.
Once you’ve sucked on the tobacco in this café, even hanging on a cross with nails through your hands and feet would be a relief. It's like smoking a…
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Added by Matt Rees on July 14, 2009 at 10:23pm —
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What lovely words! And the rest isn't bad, either. An editor wants me to change two sentences. Two. That's hardly worth pondering. Of course I can change two sentences. In fact, you can write them the way you want and I'll sign off on it.
I'm not the sort of author who thinks my work is immutable. I've learned over my lifetime that what I think I've said is often not what others comprehend, and it isn't anybody's fault. Communication is subjective, and what one person says in jest…
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Added by Peg Herring on July 14, 2009 at 9:46pm —
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Anyone who’s perused the crime fiction section of their bookstore knows the joy of finding something original among the tired old shelves of loner detectives who play by their own rules on the mean streets of some dingy inner city. The clichés of the genre were uppermost in my mind when I chose to write about
Omar… Continue
Added by Matt Rees on July 14, 2009 at 8:59pm —
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Just returned from my first Thrillerfest in NYC. It was fantastic! You can read my notes at
the Kill Zone http://tinyurl.com/nayvwg
Added by Kathryn Lilley on July 14, 2009 at 4:00pm —
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If you are lamenting the fact that you never read CHILD 44 now that it is the winner of ITW's Best First Novel award. NEVER FEAR.
This month, Grand Central is running an eBook special (at the
Sony eBook store and the…
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Added by Miriam Parker on July 14, 2009 at 6:39am —
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The September 2009 Alfred Hitchcock has a story from
one of my favorite mystery short story writers, IJ Parker. Parker's main character is Sugawara (try saying that 3 times, fast) Akitada. The setting is 11 century Japan, Heian-Kyo (modern Kyoto). The stories generally revolve around some aspect of Japanese culture of the period, often they take place during festivals, for instance.
In this case, Akitada is asked to investigate a…
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Added by Steven Torres on July 14, 2009 at 3:54am —
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As the Baltimore Examiner's
crime fiction columnist I've started a new series of reviews called The First 39. I review the first 39 pages of a book and determine whether or not the writer has done their job by successfully hooking the reader. If you follow the link, you'll see the first one went up last week, followed by a two-part interview with
Robert Gregory… Continue
Added by Sandra Ruttan on July 14, 2009 at 2:15am —
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At my blog (http://bethgroundwater.blogspot.com/) today I discussed books about writing that have been useful to me in my career and may be useful to other fiction writers. The list is below. To see why I recommended each one, check out my blog!
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
How to Write a Damn Good Mystery by James Frey
The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler
Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain
Writing the Fiction Synopsis by Pam McCutcheon
10…
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Added by Beth Groundwater on July 14, 2009 at 1:49am —
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For those who're curious about la Semana Negra, I'm writing a daily blog with pictures here : http://moissonrouge.blogspot.com/
Added by Judith Vernant on July 14, 2009 at 1:43am —
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There's a scene in Anne Tyler's THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST where the protag, who's gone into safe mode after too much emotional pain, starts doing odd things to accomplish daily tasks. My favorite is that he washes his clothes as he bathes, throwing them on the shower floor and sloshing them around with his feet.
Of course there's Kramer on SEINFELD, who prepares salad in the shower as an efficiency task.
I fear that if I were alone very often or very long, I would become like…
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Added by Peg Herring on July 14, 2009 at 12:30am —
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Writers! Are book signings a waste of time? Check
my main blog for my answer.
Added by Austin S. Camacho on July 13, 2009 at 10:44pm —
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Hi, everyone. Just a bit of self promo. My website has been updated. Please feel free to visit and comment.
Thanks.
sam
www.millarcrime.com
Added by sam millar on July 13, 2009 at 7:45pm —
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