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, …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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.
King River’s Life’s Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast features Pig Lickin’ Good, which was a 2020 Derringer Short Story Award finalist. Debra’s story originally was published in Malice Domestic’s Mystery Most Edible (2019).
Living the Dream…Or Not by Diane A.S. Stuckart Running a bed and breakfast inn has been my dream business for a couple of decades, even before I wrote the first chapters of what would become my Georgia B&B mystery series. It was the late 1990s, and I didn’t much care for the daytime job anymore. …
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Guest blogger: Sophy Smythe – Corruption in the Medical World Sophy Smythe is my pen name. I am a Dutch doctor living in Antwerp, Belgium. After more than thirty years of medical practice, I reinvented myself and pursued my long-lived dream: writing fact-based mystery-thrillers about what I know best, the medical and pharmaceutical world. The …
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Staying in Character by Maggie Toussaint When writing a series mystery, writers should strive for all their characters to “stay in character” throughout the series. A deviation in characterization is a red flag for editors and readers alike. Some writers use programs such as Scrivener to keep track of character traits. I must admit it …
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