When I sat down to write a ninja detective mystery, I knew I had a couple of fairly substantial hurdles to clear. High on the list: unrepentant assassins don’t rank very high on the “winsome protagonist scale.”If I wanted to write a mystery series starring a highly trained killer, I needed to round off some of his edges a bit. Fortunately, there’s an app a writing trick for that. Most…
For a mystery author, the conflict usually starts before the novel and expresses itself – unpleasantly – as soon as the book begins. My family calls this “jogger or corpse.” When you read a mystery novel or watch a detective show on TV, the opening scenes often show a person engaged in mundane activity. She’s running through a wooded park. He’s brushing his teeth while watching the morning news. This…
I start Posed for Murder with an art opening for Lydia McKenzie at the Bulan Gallery in Williamsburg. This is kind of funny because I just had the book launch equivalent last night at Partners & Crime in New York city. Luckily, there was wine and food, there were great people, and there were no murders. I even sold some books, which is better than poor Lydia with her murder…
We are very pleased to welcome to the ball guest author Rosemary Harris. A former bookstore manager and video producer, she is president of Sisters in Crime New England and a board member of MWA-NY Chapter. Her first book, Pushing Up Daisies was a Mystery Guild selection and was named to Library Journal’s Best First Fiction List 2008. The Big Dirt Nap will be released by St. Martin’s Minotaur on…
Love. Hope. Passion. No life is happy without all three. No book, no matter what the genre, is complete without it. Even a mystery. It’s like humor, though. Depending on the genre, there needs to be less of it, more of it, some subtlety or none at all. It’s a delicate balance, and it’s obvious when a book misses the mark. I made Lydia single in Posed for Murder, with…
We all know that covers matter. I’ve seen ones at the book store which have made me wrinkle my nose in disgust (too much pink, strange lettering, a photograph or a drawing that is just too much). And then there are the ones whose images promised such wonderful stories that I felt compelled to go right over and pick up the book. The real trick for a writer is to…
We are pleased to welcome guest author Donna Andrews to the ball. She is a mystery writer, and the winner of countless awards in the genre–the Agatha, Anthony, Barry and Lefty awards among them, and is known far and wide as one of the funniest writers in the mystery field. She began her career in 1998 as Deb Meredith just did in 2007–as winner of the St. Martin’s/Malice Domestic Best…
It’s difficult for me to remember a time when I did not read. Books were as much a part of my childhood as play, and so much of my play revolved around stories. As a child, The Humpback of Notre Dame was read aloud to me, and we named our new kitten Esmerelda. We had to change the cat’s name when we found out that “she” was really a “he,”…
We at the Ball were thrilled with the response to Joanne Rendell‘s guest post last week which quoted a frustrated Nathaniel Hawthorne, thus: “America is now given over to a damned mob of scribbling women.” We set up a CafePress store featuring T-shirts and other items that declare our pride in being Damned Scribbling Women (or, for the guys, Equal Opportunity Readers). Thanks Joanne for the inspiration, and the store…
My call actually was a real phone call. I saw that I had a message and called my voice mail. “Hello, this is Ruth Cavin from St. Martin’s Press,” a voice said and I froze. She told me her number and asked me to call her. My mind went blank. She wouldn’t be calling if she didn’t have good news, right? I tried to call my husband but he didn’t…
