By Lynn McPherson It’s been a big year in my writing life. I got an agent and, very recently, signed a three-book deal with Level Best Books. I’m absolutely delighted. And relieved. Now I’m gearing up to go back to what I love to do—writing! For me, there’s nothing more exciting than starting a new […]

By Debra Sennefelder One question authors always get is where we get ideas from. Another top ten question is how do they plot their books? Today I’m going to share a look behind the scenes of my process. The idea for SLEUTHING IN STILETTOS started from a few disjointed thoughts. I wanted the mystery to […]

By Grace Topping As a child, I enjoyed the stories my mother told my sisters and me at bedtime about her childhood. Sometimes her stories were happy and sometimes sad, but we were fascinated by them. Little did I realize that one of her experiences would profoundly affect me and cause me to do things […]

By Annette Dashofy I grew up at a time when Westerns were all the rage on TV. Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Big Valley to name a few. My dad and I watched them all. One of my favorites was a series titled Alias Smith and Jones. In it, two of the most successful outlaws in the […]

By Lois Winston Do you have a grammar pet peeve? I do, thanks to Peggy Riley Hughes, my seventh and eighth-grade English teacher. Because of Mrs. Hughes, I cringe whenever I hear or read poor grammar. If the world had more Peggys, I’d cringe a lot less. To boldly go where no man has gone […]

By Bethany Maines In this day of Marvel Universes and streaming limited– run shows, no, it’s not a surprise that it’s a sequel. It seems like everyone is embracing the sequel world-building ethos. But how is it that Marvel is thriving while DC can’t seem to figure out how to connect… anything? Or, for that […]

By James M. Jackson Answer me this: It’s summer. I point to any sugar maple in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan forest my protagonist Seamus McCree calls home and ask, what color are its leaves? We all know the answer: green. Yet, what I cannot know is if the “green” you see is the same […]

By Barbara Kyle Mystery. Thriller. Romance. Science Fiction. Horror. The publishing industry uses these labels for what they call “genre” novels. Literary critics often dismiss genre novels as lightweight, even trivial. But are they? After all, it can be argued that even classic literary novels fall within the bounds of some genre. Jane Austen’s Pride […]

As some of you know, writers today are responsible for a significant portion of their books’ virtual and in-person promotion work. Marketing is fun but, at the same time, can be draining. I tend to push very hard for the month before and after a book’s release date. That means up to twelve hours a […]