The Road to Publication

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment the paradigm shift occurred.  The transition from traditionally published author to an independent one marked the beginning of the change. When my first book was published, the overwhelming feeling of vulnerability I felt shocked me. A part of me was sitting on that bookshelf for anyone to see and…

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Lose the Lukewarm Writing – Going from Tepid to Torrid

  I’m inclined to agree… I was a little upset… It was almost too much to bear… He was kind of difficult… She was barely passing… She was practically salivating… These limp descriptions are the tepid water of writing – the equivalent of a timid hand raised half way with no real expectation of being…

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The Voices in my Head

What captures you more—a thrilling plot or a fascinating character? The impetuous Scarlett O’Hara and the dashing Rhett Butler, or the Civil War? A good story makes us care about the people in it—everything else is secondary. Complex characters drive the action and the plot.

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Pontificating with Purple Prose

  If there’s a passage I’m overly proud of—it usually means I need to cut it. There is a big difference between a well-crafted sentence relevant to the story, and one that sounds impressive but does nothing to move the story forward. This kind of self-indulgence is referred to as purple prose: metaphor after metaphor;…

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Villains – the New Heroes?

  I love my bad guys. They are the most fun to write—their evil deeds flow effortlessly from my imagination. They are malicious, devious, merciless, and sadistic. But If I’m not careful, they begin to resemble cardboard cutouts in black hats and handlebar mustaches. While it is tempting to craft a character oozing with evil…

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What Makes Thriller Writers Tick

  “What’s the best way to assassinate someone and make it look like an accident?” “How about poisons—which are undetectable in an autopsy?” In most circles, these types of questions would be cause for alarm—and notification of the authorities. Not so at Thrillerfest, the premiere writer’s conference for thriller writers where talk about death, murder,…

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Show, Don't Tell

  A familiar axiom of writing is “show, don’t tell”.  We hear it everywhere: from teachers, in articles, in writing workshops. For a long time, I had no idea what it actually meant. What do you mean, don’t tell? Aren’t we storytellers? My natural inclination was to sit down and tell what happened; hovering above…

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