A REVIEWER’S LAMENT by Steven Steinbock Of all the regular Criminal Brief columnists, I’m the only one who doesn’t publish fiction. I read mysteries, collect them, chronicle their history, and review them. But I don’t write them. I’ve been reviewing mysteries for more than a dozen years. I started out in newspapers, and moved on […]

SOMETHING DIFFERENT by Deborah Elliott-Upton Every once in a while, I try something different – or at least different from the same old, same old. Nothing newsworthy, but something to shake up the routine. This last week, I painted my nails a non-traditional (for me) cotton-candy pink instead of my usual Hot! Hot! Hot! red. […]

BURNING DOWN THE ORPHANAGE by Robert Lopresti So you are writing a book and suddenly realize that what you need to make it perfect is a little chunk of someone else’s book. There in Chapter 37 you can have Thornwell take a book off the shelf in his study and read out loud a passage […]

HOW I FOUND VIRGINITY AND MY VOICE by Melodie Johnson Howe Voice is one of those “writerly” terms that are thrown around in writer’s workshops and discussed on author panels. It’s a term that drives me crazy, because none of us really know how to define it. Asking a writer how she developed her voice […]

AWAY AVEC LE CLICHÉ by James Lincoln Warren This past Saturday, Paul Guyot directed me (and a lot of others, including Elaine Flinn, Gar Anthony Haywood, and Robert S. Levinson) to David Montgomery’s blog, Crime Fiction Dossier, where there was a lively exchange concerning clichés in P.I. fiction. Among David’s least favorites were the following: […]

CHICK PICKS by Leigh Lundin At 3 in the morning, a good time to mentally compose stories and columns, I awoke and flipped on music. The artistes transitioned from Procol Harum to the Righteous Brothers. I reflected that even with Remy Zero, Eminem’s 8 Mile, Vivaldi and Corelli on my iPod, I can’t hide age. […]

THE USUAL SUSPECTS by John M. Floyd The print media loves lists. Every time you pick up a magazine, you see an article about someone’s top ten movies, best vacation spots, favorite recipes. Such pieces do well because we as readers and consumers love lists too. It’s not only a way to compare our choices […]