writing craft

  • Shop Talk: A Year of Writing Advice and Stories from the Trenches

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    Itโ€™s that time of the year again, and, no, Iโ€™m not talking about the holidays. Iโ€™m talking about year-end-list time. Just like the holidays, year-end lists can be anxiety inducing, especially for authors.ย  So, as a reprieve from everybody and their Uncle Bobโ€™s โ€œFavorite Books of 2023,โ€ Iโ€™d like to offer you something a little…

  • Shop Talk: Michael Farris Smith on Learning the Habit of Writing

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    I cut my teeth on Larry Brown. If youโ€™ve never heard of Larry before, let me introduce you by way of Michael Farris Smith. Both are Mississippi authors who arenโ€™t afraid to stare straight into the hard stuff. Both write prose so clean it sings. Larry was gone by the time I started reading him,…

  • Shop Talk: Lou Berney Is a Fanatical Believer in Naps

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    Lou Berney is one of the reasons I write crime fiction. Coming up, I cut my teeth on Southern writers like Flannery Oโ€™Connor, Larry Brown, Harry Crews, and Jesmyn Ward. It wasnโ€™t until I found The Long and Faraway Gone, Louโ€™s third novel, that I realized the full power of crime fiction. Iโ€™m not alone…

  • Shop Talk: Nina Simon Tells the Incredible Story Behind Her Breakout Debut Novel

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    I met Nina Simon shortly after I read her beautiful, heartfelt debut, Mother Daughter Murder Night. If there were ever an author whose persona perfectly captures the verve of her work, itโ€™s Nina.ย  Ninaโ€™s all natural, almost crunchy in a Santa Cruz kind of way. She speaks from the gut and doesnโ€™t pull any punches….

  • How Subplots and Plot Filaments Lend Texture and Depth to Any Novel

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    More than any other variant included under the umbrella of โ€œcrime fiction,โ€ mystery novels embody a straightforward setup of the conflict-and-resolution components of storytelling. The conflict is murder. The resolution is naming whodunit. Everything in betweenโ€”the rising and falling action, the crises and complications, the revelations and setbacksโ€”all of that can be summed up as…


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