A recurring Facebook meme has people listing books that have made the greatest and most lasting impression on them throughout their lives. Because I tend to hang out mostly with avid readers (many of them also writers), I’ve seen a lot of these personal lists and found them all interesting. But one vital element is […]

I thought donating naming rights for animals in one of my novels would be an easy way to contribute to charity auctions at mystery conventions and wouldn’t have any effect on the book. Because my protagonist, Rachel Goddard, is a veterinarian, I’ll always have animals in my books and will always be in need of […]

(A version of this essay originally appeared in Spinetingler e-zine. It answers a number of questions I’ve been asked about my characters.) I always cringe when I read a novel or see a movie that romanticizes poverty in the southern mountains – the noble people of Appalachia, speaking an arcane dialect, whipping up nifty herbal […]

One question mystery and suspense writers are used to hearing is, “Why do you want to write about such awful things?” The unspoken message is that something must be wrong with a person who sits alone in a room all day, dreaming up ways to commit murder and other varieties of mayhem. But most of […]

T.S. Eliot wrote, “The naming of cats is a difficult matter,” and as a lifelong cat-owner, I agree — but choosing a name for a fictional character takes difficulty to a whole new level. It’s a lot like naming a child. The recipient will live with your decision forever, and if you make a mistake […]

Learning to read critically has been an enormous help to me as a writer. I’ve learned more from analyzing published novels than any how-to book could have taught me. An extraordinary book may silence my inner critic at the conscious level, but even when I’m swept up in a story some part of my mind […]

The short answer is, “Who the heck knows?” The long answer is that a lot of factors are at work here, and if you haven’t had any luck selling to a traditional publisher you may be bouncing from one brick wall to another through no fault of your own. Writing is art, publishing is business. […]

Today’s mystery fans expect writers to play fair. Readers, and therefore agents and editors, will no longer accept the sudden appearance at the climax of a villain who’s never been seen or mentioned before. They want the killer — masquerading as an innocent party — to show up early in the book and appear at […]

(First published on the Mystery Morgue site.) The last time an interviewer asked me to describe my writing process, I replied honestly, “Utter chaos.” Try as I might, I can’t control the way a story gels in my mind or how I get it onto the page. Ideas come at me from every angle — […]