Craft
What Are Thriller Authors Truly Afraid Of?
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At Halloween, fear is an emotion that is universally celebrated, but for me, terror has been an ever-present source of inspiration for fiction. My fears are vast, ever-encroaching, sensual….
Why Horror Fiction Matters for Telling Indigenous Stories
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I’ve been consuming horror films and books from perhaps a too young age, though it’s worked out fine for me. It’s been a formative genre for me as a…
A Murder of Poets: Or, the Inescapable Connections Between Crime Fiction and Poetry
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“Murder will out…” –Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales Poetry and pathology. Verse and victim. Meter and murder and mayhem. Poetry and crime fiction seem to go together like,…
Safe Places: On Writing Books for Teens about Teen Issues
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I moved ten times before I turned seventeen. That number doesn’t count temporary moves while waiting for housing, like the time we lived in a hotel on Waikiki for…
David L. Ulin on Capturing the Special, Despairing Noir of the West
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David L. Ulin has spent the better part of thirty years as the preeminent book critic in the West; first at the late, great, LA Reader and then as…
From Broadway Musicals to Thrilling Mysteries: A Writing Life in Two Acts
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I’ve always been a tremendous fan of thrillers, especially of the psychological variety. Whether on the page or on the screen, they rank amongst my favorite thing ever. (I…
Black Horror Fiction Has Always Been Here. What’s Changed Is The Attitudes of Gatekeepers.
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2023 has, so far, been a year full of innovative and mind-bending anthologies, and Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror is one of the best. With an incredible…
Jesse Q. Sutanto on Toxic Friendships, Shrinking Attention Spans, and Finding the Muse
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As one of the terminally online, I really enjoyed the recent “how often men think about the Roman Empire” discourse on Twitter. One response that went viral claimed that…