FURTHER AVENTURES OF A TRAVELING BANDERSNATCH by Steven Steinbock I’m still on the road. As I write this, I’m sitting by the pool at a hotel in Seaside, Oregon, fifteen miles from my birthplace of Astoria (the mouth of the Columbia River, the end of the Oregon Trail, and the oldest town west of the […]

WRITING MAGIC by Deborah Elliott-Upton I am in awe of magicians. I suppose I should call them illusionists since no true magic takes place, only slight of hand and misdirection, but I like “magic” better. Writing is magical. An idea appearing from the ethers and taking shape on paper or a computer screen, characters coming […]

LOVE LETTERS IN THE NET by Robert Lopresti One of the gazillion ways that the Internet has changed my life is fan mail. You no longer need a stamp, an address, and a half hour of time to tell somebody you like their stuff. A few years ago I decided that whenever I read a […]

ON SHEEP AND NOT GIVING UP WRITING by Melodie Johnson Howe My father’s favorite phrase was “give the sons of bitches hell, Mel.” Growing up I was never quite sure who the sons of bitches were, or why I should give them hell. When I became a model, then an actress, and finally a writer, […]

COVERING THE STORY Part 2 by James Lincoln Warren Last week I told how I had decided to write “When the Wind Blows”, the short story that earned the cover of the October issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. At that moment, I had only two ideas: a cop obsessed with a crime (a requirement […]

WOMEN in CRIME by Leigh Lundin In the heyday of the TV-Movie-of-the-Week, Oxygen, and WE cable movies for women, I once suggested creating a ratings web site for (re)viewers with the following categories: RATINGS women good, men bad women good, men bad (son maybe good)women good, men bad (but grandfather maybe good)women good, men bad […]

I first met R.T. Lawton and his wife Kiti in New York City a couple of years ago for an MWA event. He’s not the kind of guy you’re likely to forget, or want to forget, if only for having one of the world’s truly magnificent mustaches. Here’s what the Pike’s Peak Writer’s Conference says […]