Sometimes, you’re looking for a how-to book. Other times, what you need is a how-I book. This is one of those. Writers face turning points every day, dozens of times. Even the most minor scene has repercussions: everything is a write of passage. It’s also, as jobs go, remarkably lonesome, since few of us have…
Read MoreMary Russell’s Great War journal has come to light, beginning on August 4, 1914. This is week six. (For the other weeks, click here.) 8 September 1914 School is now fully under way. Not that Levi and I are directly concerned with classrooms, but our tutors follow the schedule of public school, so we are now…
Read MoreCrime and Thriller Writing is the how-to book I wrote with Michelle Spring. If you’d like to win a copy, joining the fanfic “Letters of Mary” will put your name in the hat–see below. It’s a collection of reflections followed by step-by-step recommendations on how, what, and why to write. Michelle, unlike me (I am definitely an Organic…
Read MoreBecause I’ll be in Tacoma this weekend, I thought my Throwback Thursday ought to show me when I lived there, Back In The Day, when I was still Laurie Richardson. And this is one photo where you should be glad for both washout and fading, because the color of that dress was truly blinding: This was…
Read MoreCoffee plays a large role in the Russell memoirs, and I believe we can now see the kind of pot the Holmes household possesses: Love the Boing Boing channel.
Read MoreOn the centenary of the Great War, a journal has come to light with weekly entries from a very young Mary Russell. It begins, appropriately enough, on August 4, 1914, when Russell is living with her parents and brother in San Francisco. This is week five. (To read from the beginning, click here.) 1 September…
Read MoreCrime and Thriller Writing is my how-to book—or, about half mine. I wrote this how-to book of crime writing with Michelle Spring, but it’s not just us: we asked twenty-six other bestselling crime writers to write an essay on…anything. That’s right, we just asked them to write us a few pages on whatever was on their mind, or they…
Read MoreIt may be entirely redundant, considering I live in Santa Cruz, to point out that I used to be a hippie. However, I thought you might like to see how very long that has been the case. This taken in 1971, when I was taking my first classes in religious studies at West Valley College…
Read MoreOn the centenary of the Great War, a journal has come to light with weekly entries from a very young Mary Russell. It begins, appropriately enough, on August 4, 1914, when Russell is living with her parents and brother in San Francisco. This is week four. (The journal illuminates that portion of Miss Russell’s memoirs…
Read MoreCrime and Thriller Writing is my how-to book—or, about half mine. (And it’s now available as an ebook.) I co-wrote this exploration of the mysteries of crime writing with Michelle Spring, who unlike me (an Organic Writer) is an Organized Writer down to her bones. But one of the best parts of the book is…
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