Essays
How Do Cold Case Investigators Identify A Body When DNA Testing Is Not Possible?
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The risk of becoming an unidentified decedent, or a John or Jane Doe, isn’t something most of us will face when we die—but it is a possibility, especially for the most vulnerable among us. There are tens of thousands of long-term unidentified persons in the United States, whose cases have sat for years, even decades,…
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 two months. Or the many short stints in apartments, often with no furniture other than the bench seat from our minivan, a television, and some air…
What Is the Legacy of Walter Hill?
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Will the real Walter Hill please stand up? The screenwriter and director is hard to label. Should Hill, now in his 80s, be considered the screenwriter of classic crime films like “The Getaway” and “The Drowning Pool?” The director of uncharacteristic, offbeat films like “Streets of Fire,” “Brewster’s Millions” and “Crossroads?” Or the auteur of…
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 can practically recite the entirety of Rear Window verbatim, with a convincing Grace Kelly, Jimmy Stewart or Thelma Ritter impersonation, depending on the delivery.) I adore…
Lately I’ve Been Dressing For Revenge: What Taylor Swift Teaches Us About Genre Fiction
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I used to say I hated Taylor Swift. The year was 2008. I was a poor grad school student subsisting on cheap slices and dollar Bud Lights, the latter of which brought me to a dive bar close to campus one night after an evening poetry seminar. Crowded and loud, I was sipping from my…
The Four Corners of Subjectivity
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One hears it all the time. A reader praises a book because they find the characters “likable” or “relatable.” Another reader dismisses a book because they couldn’t “identify with the characters” or, more damningly, “didn’t care about the characters.” Why do some characters inspire empathy in some readers while leaving others cold? By what alchemy…
Note to Self, and Other True Crime Fans: These Tragedies Are Real
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The scene couldn’t have been written any better. It was the middle of the night and a father bolted upright in bed, hearing noise downstairs in the kitchen of his suburban home. His wife and children slept peacefully, but the man suspected an intruder had entered the house. And not just any intruder, he feared,…