TOUGH GUY, HUH? by Steven Steinbock All this week, and until next weekend, I’m hosting a forum on hard-boiled heroes at AudioBook Community. I hope you’ll stop by if you haven’t already. The landing page features interviews with tough-guy narrators Stacy Keach and Richard Ferrone, as well as my own interview with “Jack Reacher” and […]

NOVEL CONCEPTS by Steven Steinbock At the beginning of October, I had pretty well completed the first draft of the novel I’d been working on since spring. By pretty well, I admit that there were still four chapters that consisted only of bullet points, including a few questions I had yet to discover the answers […]

TOUGH GUYS AND THE GREAT DETECTIVE by Steven Steinbock I’ve had tough guys and The Great Detective on my mind. The tough guys are because of a project I’m doing with Audiofile Magazine. We’re doing a celebration of hard-boiled audiobooks, and I was asked to come up with a list of great detectives (and other […]

FIELD TRIPS by Steven Steinbock I haven’t unpacked, so excuse the mess. I’ve been on the road for the last ten days. Bouchercon was a blast. If you haven’t already, you can read more about it on James Lincoln Warren’s, Melodie’s, and Robert’s columns from earlier this week. Plenty of light debauchery with my mysterious […]

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION? by Steven Steinbock I was recently scouting locations. I’m lucky that I happen to live in a region that is very evocative of fictional crime. When they’re not thinking about lobsters and lighthouses and L.L. Bean, people associate Maine with Stephen King, Jessica Fletcher, and Dark Shadows. So I studied Google Maps […]

POMEGRANATE SEASON by Steven Steinbock 1 This isn’t the first time I’ve written about pomegranates. I did it here way back in December, 2008. It bears mention again. In fact, it bears more than mere mention. I never quite know when to expect pomegranates in the stores. Whenever I’ve asked the produce people at supermarkets, […]

UP A TREE by Steven Steinbock Last week I had some dental surgery. As a followup I was given a prescription for a pain killer. I usually am fine with ibuprofen (Advil or Motrin) and those non-prescription drugs took care of the pain and swelling until Sunday night when I was feeling extra achy and […]