Genres
How a Trip to a Museum Turned into the Perfect Start to a Mystery
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School field trips. Exhibitions. Guided tours. It might be easy to dismiss museums as stuffy or even boring, but they are far from that—especially to an aspiring crime writer looking to write her first murder mystery. The idea for my debut historical mystery, A Traitor in Whitehall, came to me while standing in the middle…
Nine Crime Novels Featuring Found Families
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My historical novel published in 2021, Death at Greenway, used research on the real people who had lived on the estate of Agatha Christie’s holiday home in the English Riviera during World War II. Faced with the universe of facts I could lay my hands on, I had to be selective about which details were…
A Country Road, in the Dead of Night: On The Historical Hauntings of Irish Folklore
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First published in 1936, On Another Man’s Wound was written by Earnán Ó Máille and recounts his time as a guerrilla fighter during the Irish War of Independence in the nineteen twenties. It is generally considered to be the one bona-fide piece of literature to arise from that conflict. No dry military memoir, Ó Máille…
The 10 Best Bounty Hunter Movies
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The bounty hunter is the ultimate outsider in law enforcement. Neither elected like a sheriff nor sworn in like a cop, the bounty hunter gets in harm’s way as much as officers but with less authority and even lesser respect. Also known as bail enforcement or fugitive recovery, bounty hunting is uniquely American. The profession…
On Writing an Urbex Thriller and Exploring the Vertical City
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How far would you go to be the first? The only? All the great cities have become theme parks, and all the theme parks feed lots, Burning Man a millionaires’ mud-wallow, Everest an overbooked junkyard, even the once-infamous Area 51 is a tourist trap. But the most thrilling excursion you’ve never taken could be right…
On the Rise, and Fall, and Uncontainable Rebellion of Cyberpunk
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There once lived a man who was naked, raving, and could not be bound. According to the Gospel: “He tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet.” It turns out (spoiler) he was possessed. The demons were exorcised and cast out of the man. Lacking a human host, the demons possessed an…
6 Creepy Novels Featuring Murder Houses
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There’s something beautiful about ugliness. We all have it simmering under the surface. But we make damn sure not to show it. Why? In my debut, The Stranger Upstairs, Sarah Slade is a popular influencer who struggles with a dark side. Her marriage is falling apart and her career is on a knife’s edge. She…
A Roundtable Discussion on Dark Academia
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Darkened libraries, exclusive elite schools, looming Gothic towers, charismatic professors, illicit affairs, the tang of autumn in the air… rivalries and obsessions that lead to murder. Why is dark academia such a thought-provoking and alluring genre? That’s exactly what these six authors are trying to answer in today’s round-up. Layne Fargo, “The Ravages”: I started writing…
A Reading List of Badass Covens
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I’ve always been enamored with witches. Be it Roald Dahl’s child-hating witches, the Wicked Witch of the West, or Bony Legs with her iron teeth, the ferocity and power of witches always captured my attention. To witness a woman who was magical and powerful and not only knew it but unapologetically embraced it felt revolutionary….