I’ve hit double-digits! October 4th will see the release of Stitch, Bake Die!, #10 in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, currently available for pre-order from all the usual suspects. Given that when I started writing {{cough! cough!}} years ago, I expected a career in the romance genre and did briefly have one, this is […]

WRITING RACE by Laurel S. Peterson First of all, thanks, Debra, for having me on It’s Not Always a Mystery. I’m delighted to be here and to share some thoughts today on writing race. My mystery novel series, Shadow Notes and The Fallen (Woodhall Press), features a white amateur detective protagonist, Clara, who falls in […]

When to End a Series by Kassandra Lamb For the second time in my writing career, I’m facing the decision of when to end a series. It’s a bittersweet experience. An author’s characters feel very much like real people to us. It’s always tough to decide just when and where to end things. The why, […]

Sometimes I wonder why I feel such a passion for the written word and yet, I don’t love poetry. I read poems and I often appreciate the beauty of the word choices, rhythm, and beat, but I don’t go out of my way to pick up poetry books like I do novels and short story […]

Looking for a crime? Grave-robbing by Charlotte Hunter For me, grave-robbing used to conjure thoughts of 18th-century resurrection men prowling moonlit cemeteries for fresh corpses to sell to medical schools. Then I began research for my current work-in-progress and, to my surprise, discovered grave robbery remains a thriving crime throughout the United States. Some of […]

Giving the Villain a First-Person POV by Linda Lovely If the villain in a novel is intelligent, resourceful, and relentless, the heroine needs the same attributes—in spades—to outwit her opponent. An evil versus good see-saw offers an excellent suspense-building tool. This is especially true if authors give readers a peek at what evil deeds the […]

Starting a Novel: One Writer’s Approach by Lynn Slaughter As both a writer and a voracious reader, I’m always fascinated learning about the writing process of different authors. There’s definitely no one size-fits all approach. So, my philosophy is to do whatever works! Here’s what tends to work for me. First off comes a glimmer […]

Moonlight & Misadventure - a new crime anthology edited by Judy Penz Sheluk featuring stories by authors including K.M. Rockwood, Joseph S. Walker, and John M. Floyd - is a testimonial of quality to Judy paying it forward.

Years ago I wrote for the fun of writing. I worked third shift and left chapters hanging around the plant. Anonymously. It brought an expected lesson. People started leaving notes regarding the characters, did they work, have spouses, or red hair? There were also comments on conflicting information in different chapters. I wanted people to […]

One of the themes in my Kate Hamilton Mystery series is the effect of the hidden past on the present. What do we think we know? Is it true? What would happen if we learned the truth? In every book in the series, American antiques dealer Kate Hamilton must unravel the tangled threads of history […]