I recounted in my last post a comment from an agent about the historical setting of my novel. She didn’t understand why it was set in 1990 rather than the present day. As with much of her other critique, although I didn’t agree, it did make me examine the “why” of my creative decisions. When …
I had the opportunity to attend Grub Street‘s wonderful yearly writing conference, Muse and the Marketplace, last week. I participated in their Manuscript Mart program, in which you provide your query letter, synopsis and first 20 pages to an agent or editor. It’s a great program, one I’ve participated in both in 2018 and 2017 …
There’s a scene in an early season of Mad Men in which the character Kinsey, staying all night in the office, has a great idea while drinking, then wakes to find the idea gone and nothing for his pitch to Don Draper. “I had an idea and I lost it,” he admits. In a moment …
The protagonist of my novel The Halting Problem is a woman programmer at MIT in 1990. My own career has been in IT, and I was a programmer myself early on (albeit a mediocre one, so I went into management!). And as a person in the field I was aware of the change that happened …
Awesome author friend Brenda Buchanan was shocked that I didn’t have Crime Bake, the yearly Massachusetts crime and thriller conference, on my schedule. I just went to my first one, and wow, what an experience. What really hit home for me was thinking about editing, the process, the outcome, the skills. I’m in heavy edit …
I’ve been working on techniques to improve the tension in my narrative, and was thinking back to the point of view techniques of two different authors: Stephen King in Mr. Mercedes and Jo Nesbø in The Snowman. As he builds to the climax in Mr. Mercedes, he gives us a series of vignettes, each from …
I owe a debt of gratitude to Doug “D.P.” Lyle, with whom I took a Master CraftFest class at ThrillerFest in NYC in July. Not for what he did in the review of my manuscript (which was awesome), and not for what else he did, which was to inspire the hell out of me with …
I had the pleasure to attend another Maine Crime Wave last week, as produced by the amazing Maine Writers & Publisher’s Alliance. With great talks and panels, including a fascinating keynote by F. Lee Bailey, and several sessions featuring honoree Doug Preston, it was, as always informative and fun. But new for me this year …