Essays
Fighting Toxic Masculinity Through Young Adult Fiction
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When I was dreaming up the plot of my latest young adult thriller, The Revenge Game, I posed the following research question to my social media followers: “It’s hard…
How to Edit a Series of Crime Novellas with 30 Different Authors and Come Out the Other Side Feeling Grateful
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Talk to anyone who has edited an anthology, planned a Noir at the Bar, or even just tried to figure out where to go for dinner, and you’ll get…
Lee Goldberg on Westerns, Crime Novels, and Writing A Genre Mash-Up
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I’ve always loved crime novels and westerns. I’ve written dozens of crime novels, but not any westerns. Or so I thought. A few years ago, at a book signing…
From Sports Reporter to Crime Writer
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Ask me why I created a female sports reporter protagonist and the answer is easy. That’s my background. I intimately know the character’s experiences—the smell of the locker rooms,…
A Childhood Full of Love and Death: On Growing Up With a Father in Forensics
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It wasn’t a surprise to those who knew me as a child that when I start telling stories for a living, they were centered around the forensic and crime…
A Cultural History of the Erotic Thriller
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The strip mall video rental store was an emporium of illicit dreams. Its doorway in the small town where I came of age, located in between candy store and…
James Kennedy: “Storytellers are manipulative cult leaders.”
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I missed my chance to be in a cult. In my twenties, a guy on the street handed me a pamphlet to join a “communal farm”—an obvious cult. Nevertheless,…