writing
Who IS This Person on My Page?
In the spring of 2021, it was time for one of THOSE conversations. No, not with my kids; with my long-suffering editor. I’ve never been a writer who was satisfied with writing one set of characters, even if they are Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes. Plus that, the Russell series generally involves foreign travel research,…
Read MoreThe Financial Ecosystem of the Writer
A while ago on the Facebook group The Beekeeper’s Apprentices, a discussion rose up about the ethics of buying second-hand books. Not old, out-of-print books, merely used books by active writers who are trying to make a living off their writing. The discussion in some ways runs parallel to another question I am sometimes asked:…
Read MoreMaking Sense of It (the edit)
As I’ve said any number of times, my first drafts are awful, more like expanded outlines than an actual novel. Mostly, they’re a way to confirm the machinery of the plot before I buckle down to craft a sensible narrative out of contradictory notes, half-baked characterizations, and half-seen sub-plots. (No modesty here: they really are…
Read MoreLaurie’s Writing Corners
My publisher asked me recently to give them a couple photos of my writing space, along with a short piece of writing, to use for their Instagram (@randomhouse) series called #WritersRoutine. But Insta posts aren’t meant for detail, so, for the insatiably curious (and for those who don’t have Instagram) here’s the photo of where…
Read MoreThe Wisdom of 71 Writers
I’m a self-taught writer, in that when it comes to fiction, I mostly learned by reading a million stories. Naturally, I took the basic writing classes in school, and I do have a lot of How-To guides on my shelves, but I’ve never done any advanced courses in how to be a writer. So it…
Read MoreThe Senses and Riviera Gold
A recent discussion about my next contract (and how long it would be before I could jaunt off to Paris, sigh…) had me reflecting on how dependent I am on the use of the senses to provide what writers call the “telling detail.” I have a scene in Castle Shade (no, I’m not going to give…
Read MoreThe Bronze Pour
One of the joys of writing crime stories is the wild variety of research projects that come along. In Riviera Gold, that includes bronze casting. And what do you know—there’s a foundry right here in Santa Cruz. Sean Monaghan and Courtney Scruggs of Bronze Works made me welcome, let me poke around, and invited me…
Read MoreIt never gets old
I’ve had a lot of my own books hit my hands. With 28 novels and dozens of books containing my shorter contribution, I’ve received a lot of hardbacks with my name on the cover. But in case you’re wondering, no: it never gets old. I still open the box or envelope and pull the weight…
Read MoreThe Quiet
The streets of the world are still, other than the occasional idiot who decides that the chance of driving 95 mph down the center of New York is just too good to pass up. Citizens look out their windows, astonished, as distant hills come into view, the waters of Venice and Paris are looking weirdly…
Read MoreThe Past in the Present
The threads running from past to the present have fascinated me since I was a grad student. Back then, my academic interest was on certain themes that could be traced from the pre-Israelite cultures and through the Hebrew Bible into the New Testament and beyond. Of course, now I write fiction, and there’s only so…
Read More