Writers Who Kill

How I Landed in Cozyworld: A Guest Post by Manju (MJ) Soni

2026-06-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

I met Manju Soni through our wonderful Sisters in Crime Connecticut group. Please join me in giving her a warm welcome to Writers Who Kill and Cozyworld. -- Shari Randall

HOW I LANDED IN COZYWORLD BY MANJU (MJ) SONI

I first began writing after signing up for a weekly personal essay class I saw advertised in our local community newspaper. My writing teacher, Beverly, was a quixotic woman in her mid-seventies with a perfect bob and the throaty voice of a chain smoker. She was a voracious reader consuming two books a week and was a cancer survivor, with an incredible memory in spite of surgery for a brain aneurysm.

As a doctor under apartheid, a system of legalized racism in South Africa, I had seen so much suffering I found I couldn’t get past it when writing. I constantly veered toward writing about patients I had encountered. Like the young mother who had third degree burns from a paraffin stove explosion because they had no access to an electrical grid. She refused to allow her three children, the youngest a toddler, to see her for almost six months as she recovered because she didn’t want them to see her so bandaged up. Or the many young men blinded by riot police shrapnel, and, on a happier note, the old man from a village who gifted my colleague a cow for restoring his vision after cataract surgery.

Every piece of fiction I wrote seemed trivial and self-indulgent.

Under Beverly’s kind and sometimes stern guidance, I wrote my part-memoir, nonfiction book DEFYING APARTHEID. I believe it was therapy for the years of subclinical post-traumatic stress syndrome from growing up under an authoritarian regime.

I then turned my hand to fiction. At first I wrote thrillers, then psychological suspense novels, and then domestic suspense. But none of these went anywhere in spite of my signing with an agent.

Finally, frustrated, I parted ways with my agent and decided to write something I enjoyed. A plain old mystery with a cast of characters I’d like to see in my own homogeneously white coastal New England town. The latest census says one percent of our town is Asian American, and I know all ten of us!

The result was my debut, THE MASALA CHAI MYSTERY CLUB, due to be published in July 21, 2026. In their starred review, Library Journal said, “This multicultural and multigenerational novel has intrigue, heart, and excellent storytelling that is perfect for readers who enjoy the ’Detective Aunty‘ series by Uzma Jalaluddin or Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Vera Wong and 'Aunties' books.”

When I began to submit my manuscript to agents, I had no idea it was a cozy mystery. I didn’t know this sub-sub-genre existed. But then I hit it lucky with my second agent who during our first call said she liked it because it was a ‘new cozy.’

Looking back, my debut has all the elements of a cozy. The murder takes place off screen. My protagonist is amateur sleuth Neeti Shah, a librarian who has been pushed into early retirement. She wears a saree and teams up with a community of quirky characters to solve the murder of their nasty homeowners association president, which resembles the murder in their latest book club read, THE DUMB WITNESS by Agatha Christie. And there’s chai, appetizers, a cute kid, and an equally cute dog.

I realize now, trying out various genres is not uncommon. Finding that bridge that connects what one writes with what publishers want to publish is a test of resilience and determination.

So that’s how I landed in Cozyworld, and I absolutely love it. I attended my first Malice Domestic this year and was blown away by how friendly and welcoming everyone was. It truly is an amazing community of very kind and helpful fellow authors.

Thank you for having me, and I’m looking forward to this journey of being a cozy author with all of you. Please let me know whether your journey to Cozyworld was as zigzag as mine or as straight as an arrow.

Manju (MJ) Soni grew up in South Africa and wrote DEFYING APARTHEID, a part-memoir, about being a doctor/activist under apartheid. Since then, drawing on her American, African, and Indian background, she's written mystery short fiction. Her debut cozy mystery, THE MASALA CHAI MYSTERY CLUB, which is full of heart and humor, with a saree-wearing librarian protagonist, will be coming out on July 21 with Crooked Lane Books. Preorder here: https://tinyurl.com/2w74j2c4

The Mouse in Our Canoe: Life and writing tips gleaned from time spent with the grandchildren by Molly MacRae

2026-06-07T01:30:00.000-04:00

Lake Sara in Effingham, Illinois

We spent last week with our grandchildren (11, 9, and 3) at a lake. The week was full of sandcastles, canoeing, kayaking, fishing, reading, and playing games. Watching their amazing minds blossom as they soak up the world around them is a joy. It’s also a neat way to pick up tips for life in general and for writing. Here are a few I learned last week.

Weigh the ramifications: When you and the 3-year-old find a mouse in your canoe, just as you’re about to get in it, you have choices. One is to agree with the three-year-old that Mousie is sooooo cute and wants a canoe ride, too. Another is to help Mousie out of the canoe (without Mousie running up your arm) so she can go home to her cute, cute family in the woods.

Writers make choices affecting their characters’ lives every day. Choose wisely.

Reversals: When a child is clearing their place after a meal, happy and excited to get back outside, will the not-quite-empty milk cup in one hand stay upright or will it suddenly reverse, with the next three hops?

Reversals are good for ramping up tension in a story. Reversals in real life are good for ramping up tension, too, but the issues they cause can sometimes be resolved with a paper towel and a yell of “oopsie daisies!”

Persevere: If you don't catch a fish the first day, don’t give up. The next day you and your brother might catch fifteen each!

Success isn’t guaranteed for writers or for anyone attempting anything. If you give up, though, success will be a whole lot harder.

Be well-rounded: Realistic, memorable characters need to be as well-rounded as ballerina bulldozer drivers.

Don’t panic: Until this week I have never, ever had a tick. Seen them on others? Sure. Dealt with them calmly? Yep. But when I woke up Thursday morning and found one on the back of my upper left arm—gah! Ick, ick, ick. But it was okay. I knew what to do: Find the helper. In this case the helper was my husband. He knows all about ticks.

If you’re going to be out there with ticks, someone is bound to get one. Just remember, there are people who can help you through fraught situations from ticks to computer viruses.

Twists: Do you know any little kids who like to play with stick-on flowers, jewels, bugs, and butterflies? I do. How on earth did one of the glittery stick-on jewels from the kids’ art kit end up stuck to the back of my upper left arm?

A good twist ending is a jewel in a story and in life. Especially when it makes everyone laugh.

Not a tick

My biggest take away from our time at the lake is this: If you slip, trip, or let go of the sandwich you’ve been waving like a flag and it sails off into the lake, dust yourself off, keep going, and yell “oopsie daisies!”

Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.

Spotted in the Wild by Mary Dutta

2026-06-06T01:00:00.000-04:00

The future of short crime fiction is a bit of a mystery at the moment. Writers continue to create terrific stories, but finding a home for them keeps getting harder. Several mystery magazines have shuttered, as have some of the publishers that produced story anthologies.

My recent travels, however, have given me some reassurance about my writing future. For instance, in a recreation of a 1950’s family apartment at the Norsk Folkesmuseum, Norway’s museum of cultural history, I spied an Agatha Christie novel on the shelf. Den Fjerde Rytter, or The Fourth Horseman, was originally published in English as The Pale Horse.

While waiting to board the boat for my fjord tour in Flåm, I explored the local railway museum. It included a copy of Detectiv Magasinet, a long-running pulp fiction magazine from the first half of the twentieth century. The issue on display featured a story by Sverre Vegenor, the pen name of Sverre Nicolaisen, who published hundreds of stories across multiple genres, most of them detective fiction.

Closer to home, the Mustard Museum in Madison, Wisconsin displayed a copy of Murder cuts the Mustard, a cozy mystery published in 2019. And as the author of humorous mysteries, I particularly appreciated a local garden shop shelving its pesticides in a section called the murder department. It reassured me that there is still an audience out there for my style of storytelling.

Luckily, several of my own orphaned upcoming anthologies found new homes after their original publishing house folded. One sadly didn’t, but given the enduring interest in mystery fiction I spotted in the wild across continents, languages, and decades, I feel confident that the story I wrote for it will be published someday. There’s a whole world of opportunity still out there, you just need to know where to look.

Have you spotted mystery fiction in unexpected places?

Cause of Death, by Lori Roberts Herbst

2026-06-05T01:30:00.000-04:00

All mystery authors approach a new project in their own unique ways. Some start with a theme in mind. Others plan the ending first. Perhaps they delve into character backstories. Red herrings, suspect lists, first lines—the processes of sitting down to work on a new story are as vast as the number of individual writers.

For me, the storytelling can’t start until I’ve chosen the method of murder.

Before I even know whodunnit, I have to know howdunnit.

I’m not sure what my fascination with the cause of death says about my personality. I only know that my obsession with it has led my husband to say more than once that he’s afraid to go to sleep at night.

When I sit down to plot a new book, the first thing I do is determine how the yet-unknown victim will be killed. Every further decision springs from that one. The victim must be someone who can realistically die in the way I’ve envisioned. They must have reasonable access to the location. They should be in proximity to the murder weapon.

For example, when I was in the beginning stages of thinking about Frozen in Motion, book three in the Callie Cassidy series, before I even had a title or a vague rendering of the plot, my husband and I attended a hockey game. At one point, bored with the action, I looked up at the catwalk in the upper reaches of the stadium. “What if someone fell off that metal contraption and down onto the ice?” I thought. “Better yet, what if someone was pushed…” And the book was born.

Obviously, there are a finite number of ways a person can die, and over the many hundreds of years of storytelling, at some point they’ve all been used. So, the goal, for me at least, becomes, “How can I give this method of murder my own unique twist?”

If a victim is stabbed, how about using a candy cane to the carotid artery? Strangling can occur with a photographer’s camera strap. An elderly woman decides to bludgeon someone? What better tool than her cane…or maybe even her walker?

I’ve pushed victims from the aforementioned catwalk, from mountain ledges, from lighthouses. I’ve drowned them in hot tubs and poisoned them with hand cream. I once locked a clown in a lion’s cage at the circus, and…well, you can guess how that turned out.

Here’s the point at which I remind you it wasn’t actually ME who committed these malicious acts. Okay, so they were my characters, fictional beings created in my deviant mind, but still…no cause for alarm. My husband’s insomnia is completely misguided.

Hmm…insomnia…there must be a way to use that as a tool to kill…Go to sleep, honey. Don’t worry. You’re safe.

Writers, what’s your first step in creating a story? Readers, what’s the most unique murder method you’ve come across?

The Callie Cassidy Mystery series is available on Amazon Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback.

***

Lori Roberts Herbst writes the Callie Cassidy Mysteries, a cozy mystery series set in Rock Creek Village, Colorado, and the soon-to-be-released Seahorse Bay Mysteries, set in a Texas cruise port town. To find out more and to sign up for her newsletter, go to www.lorirobertsherbst.com

Who Else Can You Talk With About This if Not Your WWK Friends? by Susan Van Kirk

2026-06-04T03:00:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, it occurred to me I’ve been living much of this year with a slight feeling of dread. I’ve noticed that vague suspicion for some time but wasn’t sure what it was or where it originated. It began around January. Then, I pulled an old blog post out of a folder as I was sorting things and read the title: “Some Thoughts on my 69^th Birthday.” Wow.

It began with: “When I woke this morning on October 2, 2015, I suddenly realized two terrifying facts: while it might be my 69^th birthday, I’ve actually lived 69 years already. Instead, I am beginning my 70^thyear today. Somehow that makes a difference. Second, the first students I taught are now eligible for social security. It was enough to make me pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep.”

Bingo! My feeling of dread now makes sense. I glanced at the calendar. This year is my 80^th year, and October has a date on my calendar that will live in personal infamy.

Last weekend, that thought was brought home to me when I had a book signing, and a former student of mine from my first year of teaching showed up from another state to have me sign his book. It’s a memoir about my teaching life. His arrival was a wonderful surprise, but it also a reminded me my first students are now 75 years old! Egad! How did this happen?

Ah, the origin of my feeling of dread. I now understand.

Now, I will attempt to make it go away by trying to account for the thoughts I can summon up to remove the dread concerning my slow march toward fall. After all, we writers are superb at finding rationalizations.

I’m undoubtedly fortunate. People no longer question me if they observe me parking in a senior citizen spot with a handicapped sticker. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. Let’s call it neutral.

Numbers are amazing parts of our aging, if only in our minds. If you had asked me many years ago if I’d have a long life, I would have said, “No.” I was the puny one, the runt of the litter. The thought of living to three score and twenty was never on my radar. Why would it be? On my next birthday, I will have outlived my mother by twenty-four years and my younger brother by thirty-four. But my older brother has three years on me and is still plugging along, and my father, who died in 2007, lived to be eighty-seven. You never know, do you? I believe I will hope for the best combination of genes on this one.

I’ve made it to a decent age when you consider that life expectancy in the early twentieth century—the century in which I was born—was forty-six. The high school class of ‘64, both cursed and applauded as the first year of the Baby Boomers, is turning eighty with me. Most of us are now retired and have survived long enough to no longer wear a watch or set an alarm clock. On days when we wake up without aches and pains, we check to see if our hearts are still beating. So far, so good.

I find some advantages to my thoughts about still breathing, well, other than the obvious one. First, I was fortunate to have a profession I loved, and it brought me into contact with thousands of students who came in and out of my life, some indelibly etched on my brain for assorted reasons. That career also provided me with excellent fodder for my mysteries where Grace Kimball, retired teacher, remembers an adult she encounters who was once a teenager in her classroom.

Then, there are my children. I have three adult children for whom I’m no longer legally responsible. They are still speaking to me most days. We lived together over a twenty-five year period and survived. But, just in case, I have long-term care insurance.

Then, I have eleven grandchildren who love to read. It obviously skipped a generation despite doing my best as a parent/English teacher to their parents. I must find some way to take credit for this gift in my grandchildren.

Rationally, I think I’ve made a case to remove my feeling of dread this year, but, once again, rationally, will I be at my computer typing away at a blog for Writers Who Kill expressing a vague feeling of dread in 2036? One can only hope.

Susan Van Kirk writes the Endurance Mysteries, a cozy/traditional series set in a small Midwest town. Her latest book is a memoir about her forty-four years of teaching. Sign up for her newsletter, or find out more at susanvankirk.com

What Makes Me Buy a Cozy Mystery: Trusting Recommendations From Authors I Admire

2026-06-03T02:00:00.000-04:00

by G. P. Gottlieb

As a host for New Books in Literature on the New Books Network, I usually look for ambitious, character-driven fiction. These novels, whose authors I interview, span the decades and explore human suffering, resilience, and transformation. In between reading gorgeous novels for NBN, I like to refresh my palate with an excellent cozy mystery.

I know it sounds strange to go from reading sweeping literary fiction to a widowed doctor solving crimes in 1870s Los Angeles or a retired fashion model-turned-sleuth in Wisconsin. I read more than one hundred books a year and have learned that cozy mysteries are a perfect palate cleanser, but only if the writing is sharp and the plot interesting enough to hold my attention.

I occasionally become immersed in a traditional mystery series, but I usually bounce back to cozy or cozy-adjacent novels in which the sex and violence take place offstage. I like that women in cozy mysteries aren’t all beautiful, nubile young things and can be nuanced, complicated, and a little overweight. And I also like cozy protagonists to be thoughtful, intelligent, and quick-witted.

If your cozy mystery involves ghosts or talking animals, I’m not your audience. If every year, as your protagonist is trying to get her muffins baked in time for the summer fair, a murder occurs on the village green, I’m not going to be interested in your series. If you dump the backstory like a load of mulch in my front yard, I’ll stop reading. And if your characters engage in silly conversations that don’t do anything to delve into a character or advance the plot, you’ve lost me.

Why I Rarely Buy an Advertised Book

I’ll occasionally scroll through social media, stopping to watch a baking video or cute dance routines, only to find myself inundated by advertisements for books (okay, also cute dresses and shoes, but I hardly ever order anything). The problem isn’t that the descriptions aren’t exciting or the cover isn’t splashy enough, but that I can’t begin to guess if the writing is going to hold up. And I’m not going to spend more than $10 on an eBook of questionable quality that I don’t own and can’t lend to a friend.

Do mystery authors who advertise on social media see a return on their investment? Maybe they used to. I empathize with other authors because I too long for the good old days, when vibrant ads or good reviews could garner a broader readership. It’s gotten hard to find readers. So, what’s a mystery author to do?

My Favorite Way to Find New Cozy Mysteries

First, be a team player. That means post reviews of other people’s books and join one of several important organizations where you can be part of a writing community and learn how to advance your plot and your writing career (check out Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America). Second, invest in a good editor and hone your skills. Especially if you plan to publish your own book. I’ve read some fabulous indie-published mysteries, but far too many have been sloppy in some way, poorly written, or lacking in polish. It’s occasionally nice to know what characters are wearing, especially if it tells us something about that character, but I don’t need a description of the protagonist’s daily wardrobe choices.

All this advice leads to my main point: I’ll buy your book if an author I respect recommends it. I’ll read your reviews – don’t worry if you’ve been skunked by trolls who leave one star and claim that you have spelling mistakes or too many characters. If they read an advanced reader’s copy (ARC) of the book, there very well might be spelling mistakes. And Agatha Christie introduced 14 characters in the first chapter of The Body in the Library. I don’t pay attention to terrible reviews, and you shouldn’t, either.

But I do more than pay attention when an author-friend reads your book and tells me that it’s good. All you have to do is write a killer story, build relationships in the mystery community, and ask trusted readers to help spread the word. That’ll make me want to buy your book more than any social media ad ever will.

G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Charred: A Whipped & Sipped Mystery (Anamcara Press, May 29, 2026), the third in a culinary cozy mystery series. She is on the board of Sisters in Crime Chicagoland and a member of SinC Colorado, MWA, and Blackbird Writers. As host for New Books in Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network, she has interviewed nearly 280 authors. If you enjoy culinary cozy mysteries set in Chicago, the Whipped & Sipped Mysteries invite you into a world of friendship, coffee, pastries, and crime-solving without the nightmares.

Your Next Villain Doesn't Own a Gun

2026-06-02T01:00:00.000-04:00

By James M. Jackson

Old scam, new potency

A woman in her seventies picks up the phone. It's her grandson. He's in trouble. There's been an accident, a lawyer, bail, and he needs money fast, and please, please don't tell Mom. She knows this scam, but she knows his voice, too. And right now it’s shaking. She asks questions; he answers. She wires the money.

It wasn't him. It was a few seconds of his voice lifted from a birthday video on social media and run through an AI cloning tool by someone she will never meet, in a country she'll never visit. The answers were shaped by material scraped from his social media.

I lifted that updated scenario, in spirit, straight from the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report (downloadable PDF), published by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which logged more than a million complaints last year and $20.877 billion in reported losses—up 26% from last year.

Meanwhile, the violent crimes that populate many of our novels are on the decline. According to the preliminary FBI report on violent crime (press release here) murder and manslaughter were down 18.1% last year. Robbery down 18.5%.

We writers can do a real service for our readers and increase their awareness of how insidious these crimes are by including them—and the damage they do to their victims—in our novels and stories. It requires some thought to pull it off.

Oh sure, there’s plenty of traditional mayhem to populate our standard crime genre tropes if that’s what we want to write about. But crime is changing and moving rapidly to financial-driven crimes. My experience is most people think they are too smart to fall victim to modern hoaxes. Then, of course, they do.

Who the victims are

Americans sixty and older reported $7.7 billion in losses last year, up 59% in twelve months, with an average loss of $38,500. For a retiree, that can mean losing their house, their savings, their dignity. And these weren't fools. Of the crypto-fraud victims the FBI proactively notified through one initiative, 78% had no idea they were being scammed. That same program referred dozens of victims to specialists for suicide intervention. People don't just lose money to these crimes. Some of them don't survive the shame.

That’s the pain we can show through our writing. But we have challenges.

The villain has no face

Crime fiction loves a mastermind—the antagonist you can name and chase to a final confrontation. The 2025 data makes that harder to justify.

The single largest source of financial loss last year wasn't a heist or a hack. It was cryptocurrency investment fraud, a slow-burn con the press calls "pig butchering." They drained $7.2 billion from Americans. It’s not some super-geek hacker working in his basement (or his parents’ basement). The FBI reports these operations are largely run by organized criminal enterprises in Southeast Asia, in compounds across Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, staffed by victims of human trafficking forced to run the scams.

The person texting your protagonist sweet nothings about a can't-miss crypto play may themselves be a prisoner, beaten if they don't hit a quota. It's a victim victimizing a victim. It’s thriller material for sure, but there’s a pacing problem.

The weapon is trust, and it's patient

The other significant shift is from confrontation to confidence. There's no dark alley in these stories, no struggle, no weapon you could dust for prints. There's just patience.

Romance and investment scams are courtships. The "kill" can take months—daily good-morning texts, shared dreams, a fabricated portfolio that ticks reassuringly upward until the victim is all the way in. By the time the money's gone, the relationship feels more real than the people in the next room.

This is a slow burn—psychological thrillers, maybe? Or maybe it’s backstory that slowly appears because the immediate call to action is the recovery scam.

The recovery scam

After they rob you, someone calls offering to help you get your money back—for a fee. The IC3 logged 10,516 of these in 2025, totaling $1.4 billion. The con that robs you, and the con that robs you again while you're grieving the first one. Maybe that’s where the fiction good guys can play cat and mouse and spring the trap. And the good guys have new tools as well.

The deepfake tell

Artificial intelligence has graduated from gimmick to standard-issue tool. The report flags 22,364 complaints with an AI nexus and $893 million in losses. The tools are not just voice clones for those "distress" calls; they include AI-written scripts that make a romance bot sound like a soulmate, deepfaked celebrities hawking fake funds.

For those of us who like to slip an authentic, earned detail into a reveal, the FBI handed us a gift. In flagged employment-interview scams, investigators noticed the deepfakes weren't perfect: the speaker's lip movements didn't quite sync with the audio, and a cough or a sneeze landed a half-second off from the picture. That's your detective's gotcha—not invented, not a cheat, but a real, current tell pulled from the field. Use it before everyone else does.

The investigators get a new clock

And while the build-up part of the scam takes time, once the money begins to move, the ticking clock races. The FBI's "Financial Fraud Kill Chain" is a race against a wire transfer: freeze the funds before they hop from the first bank to the next account, then overseas, then gone. A few brief hours and minutes can make the difference between success and failure.

The genre's new dark

Old fears we trade in still work. We taught readers to fear the stranger in the dark, the knock at the door, the figure at the end of the hall. The 2025 numbers suggest the next thing to fear is gentler and far closer: the friend in your pocket. A grandchild who calls. The investor who finally understands you. The kind voice offering to fix everything.

Means is now a chatbot. Opportunity is a notification. And motive is a quota, set by someone you'll never catch, in a building full of people who can't leave.

Writers, have you started tackling these issues in your stories? Readers, will these crimes keep you up at night (reading books, hopefully, not worrying)?

* * * * *

James M. Jackson writes justice-driven thrillers with brains and bite, including the Niki Undercover Thriller series and the Seamus McCree series. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read Low Tide at Tybee, a novella featuring Seamus, his darts-throwing mother, and six-year-old granddaughter, Megan).

Hello, June by Teresa Inge

2026-06-01T05:00:00.000-04:00

As we step into my favorite month, I can’t help but smile. June has always held a special place in my heart. It’s the month I graduated many years ago, the month I got married, and the month when flowers bloom in my yard and my garden comes alive with fresh tomatoes and other homegrown goodness.

For me, June is more than the start of summer. It’s a time of leaving the cold behind, welcoming what’s new, and settling into a season of being outdoors.

One of my favorite ways to enjoy the month is by reading a book by the pool or at the beach. There’s just something about being near the water with a book in hand that I love.

June also carries a sense of celebration. Schools mark the end of the academic year with graduations, weddings fill the month with joy, and for many families, it signals the beginning of summer vacations. My husband and I just took a major RV trip through nine states in eleven days, so we are not planning another big getaway right now. Still, I do plan to take time off at the end of the month to enjoy our beach house in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I also have outdoor book signings scheduled with author friends, including my favorite annual event at a wine and craft festival, which is always fun.

Another reason I love June is the extra sunlight. With the summer solstice arriving around June 20 or 21, the days stretch longer, giving more time to enjoy the season.
In the end, June is my kind of month, full of sunshine and fresh air, walking cool hiking trails with my husband and dogs, taking my 1955 T-Bird out for a cruise, and spending time with family and friends.

How Do You Find Your Story?

2026-05-31T03:00:00.000-04:00

By Michael Geczi

Authors regularly get asked the same question: “Where/how do you come up with the story?” I like responding; it helps me fine-tune the process and, hopefully, improve.

I’m a pantser. Have some planning genes, but I get bored quickly and shortchange intricate plotting. Which is not to say there isn’t some structure involved.

Anyway, not sure if I fall into the minority, majority, or some small extreme, but I spend time with my potential main character first. Each of the MCs in my “Serial Killer Anthology” approached me and said “we need to talk.” We did, often at length. I maneuvered them. They maneuvered me, which is interesting and valuable. I tried to get a sense of whether they might be playing me and whether that might bring us to a confrontation in Act Three.

Someone – maybe even multiple someones – will get killed at some point. It’s highly likely. I’m interested if we – me as the writer and my MCs – share any common thinking on that potential development and how it might play out.

The wonderful Elmore Leonard said he “loved to make up characters and gradually build a story around them,” as they essentially “auditioned in the early scenes” and sometimes ended up with a larger role. (It’s great to have a collaborator, yes?) My “Santa Monica Homicide” collection is exactly that.

Given my focus is psychological thrillers, this first meeting is enlightening and an adventure.

Do they have a fault line that I can use? Is it obvious and already there? Or do I have to manufacture it or draw it in and, even there, will it be credible?

Do I find this person interesting? Will I fall in love with them be able to “disappear” them or turn them into a hero at some point (because I haven’t the slightest idea at this early stage).

And then there’s always the unknown: is this character capable of surprising me later, as in “two-thirds in will he or she still be the right fit for the scene I have planned for that day?”

These early characters tend to be female, at least at the beginning. That may not continue, however. Why? More interesting, more flexible, more resourceful.

Good enough for me if it’s also good enough for Richard Ford, who calls characters “unfixed, changeable and provisional … I can change them at will, and do.”

They tend to be a familiar face from a previous book. I know them, but not everything. Seems like an opportunity to explore, and what could be better than that?

I wonder what they have been up to – whether it’s interesting or just the passage of time – and would it be credible or logical for them to play a major role in a new adventure.

Admission: this is the point where I start to get concerned about “putting the same people through a similar adventure as last time” and start to create plot scenarios in my head.

· The victim becoming the offender.

· The unlikeable protagonist and the likeable antagonist.

· The extraneous character who inserts herself into the mystery.

· The faulty memory that shapes an entire life.

· The role of revenge and how it can play out differently.

· Endings that catch the bad guy, or endings that surface the motivation.

· Experiment with structure and try something new. (Check my latest, “Damaged.”)

And then I consider locations, and how they could function in different locales. Los Angeles is not New York, and neither are Cape Cod. Location significantly impact what they encounter, how they act, how they perceive others, and how they achieve or fail in their personal arc.

Dennis Lehane says, “Location is crucial to good writing. A strong sense of place fixes the action in the reader's mind ... without that ... it doesn't matter how strong your characters are.”

Which brings me to that other regular query authors encounter: “How many draft/rewrites/edits do you do?” My answer is always “as many as it takes to know – really know – that I’ve created the best story I can.”

It’s done when it’s done. I know when it is. I know when it isn’t.

Psychological thrillers offer endless opportunities to tell complex stories and enjoy myself in the process. I can break rules, twist tropes, create wonderful and hateful characters who interest me (and I feel I know), and generally skirt around violence without ever describing it in detail.

I invite you to check out my work.

***

Michael Geczi is the author of ten books, including the five-book “The Serial Killer Anthology,” the two-book “Revenge, Unhinged Series,” and the stand-alone novels, “Equinox,” and “Damaged.” He also wrote an investment-advice book earlier in his career. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Nothing bad can happen in your hometown…right?

2026-05-30T03:00:00.044-04:00

By Sarah P. Blanchard

My second novel, Grabtown, was published October 15, 2025. It’s a multi-generational small-town thriller, structured as a book-within-a-book that follows an old cold-case murder set within a contemporary timeline.

The story opens in the present with a vignette portraying three young girls confined in a cargo container, traveling to an unknown destination. The focus then shifts to a seemingly unrelated story, following two adult twins, Cassie and Ana, after the death of their mother.

As Cassie and Ana begin clearing their mother’s house after her death, they find an unpublished novel from 1985, written by their mom’s best friend, that tells of sexual trauma, abuse, arson, and a 40-year-old unsolved murder—and their mother is a key character in the story.

The twins aren’t sure whether to burn it or read it. Is it fiction, or confession?

They must navigate their own troubled relationship as they try to figure out why their mother left this story for them—and also why Cassie’s husband is now desperate to keep them from digging further into the past.

The story-within-a-story weaves together two timelines and tackles difficult topics with a “tactful approach [that] exposes a sad reality with understanding and compassion.” (Reviewer Lorraine Cobcroft, Reedsy).

Grabtown has an interesting background. I first wrote the 1985 part of the story about 35 years ago, and came close to having it traditionally published back then as a stand-alone mystery. That didn’t happen, the manuscript went into a box, and I mostly forgot about it. Two years ago, I found it, read it, concluded it was rubbish, and nearly tossed it. Then I reconsidered and gave it a second chance because, although it was badly out of date and not very well-written, the core of the story about abuse and betrayal is, sadly, still very relevant today.

So, about 25 percent of that old novel became the basis for the 1985 timeline in Grabtown.

Full disclosure: There is no abandoned village in Connecticut called Grabtown. I borrowed the name and origin story from the place where the actor Ava Gardner grew up, a poverty-stricken town close to where I lived for ten years in North Carolina. I liked the double meaning of the word, with its sinister overtones.

When readers ask, “Do you follow the classic advice to ‘write what you know’?” I usually say, “sort of.” Because no, I’ve never killed anyone, or committed arson, or had to escape a dangerous spouse. (Though I do know people who have done those things.) Both of the storylines, old and new, are fiction, but with elements of fact woven in. What I’m always aiming for is truth, carried by a fictional plot that will bring the truth home in a wrapped-up way that real life usually doesn’t do.

In my novel, Grabtown is an abandoned village just outside a fictional, colonial-era mill town I’ve called Winslow, which looks remarkably like the very real town of Putnam, Connecticut, where I live. I’ve included several Easter eggs—personal-history references and place names—especially in the old timeline. Yes, I worked in the 1970s as a news reporter at the local radio station, and I was a volunteer firefighter for a couple of years. I once owned a four-ten shotgun like the one in the story, and I’m very familiar with the farming community here. The state police barracks in Danielson is real. There’s a footbridge over the river—though not right over the falls—and a very nice café across the street from the old theater.

In my writing, I’m drawn to flawed, compassionate characters who believe they must battle their demons alone, and desperately conflicted antagonists who feel they have nothing to lose. Then I create a challenging situation, require my characters to make difficult choices based on imperfect information, and see what happens. Just like life, right? Except life doesn’t always bring a satisfying conclusion. And I’ve found that readers want their stories to first keep them on their toes, and then bring some form of justice at the end. And that’s what all good mysteries and thrillers should deliver, right? Justice.

A BookLife reviewer commented on the importance of creating this tension that leads to a final sense of justice. “The novel’s greatest strength lies in Blanchard’s deft control of mood and tone. Gothic motifs and haunting imagery lend the book an atmosphere of constant unease, right up to the final page. Yet it never overshadows the emotional force of Cassie’s discoveries, nor the sharper social commentary on the silences small towns demand. In the end, Grabtown is a story about refusing the inheritance of secrets and cycles of harm—and mustering the courage it takes to rise above them.”

Follow Sarah at:

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Random Thoughts by Nancy L. Eady

2026-05-29T01:00:00.000-04:00

1) The best anti-rain talisman known to man is the umbrella you remember to take to your office. The best rain talisman known to man is the umbrella you forget in your car.

2) If your browser history would make you the top suspect if your spouse died suspiciously, you probably write mysteries. If you don’t write mysteries, your spouse should worry.

3) Free tip: 95% of computer problems can be solved by unplugging the computer and rebooting it. Caveat: Call in the professionals for the remaining 5%. Fact of Life: If the computer displays the black screen of death, it’s dead, Jim.

4) Do you realize that modern civilization is almost totally dependent on the health of a handful of orbiting satellites? If you don’t, think back to the last time your cell phone service or internet went out.

5) If your first thought on passing a nook or a cranny is what a great place it would be to stash a body, weapon or assailant, you are either a mystery writer or a contract killer.

6) Never let the office copier know you are working on a deadline.

7) The worst typographical error that you don’t catch will be on the first page of the document in a prominent position.

8) Important tip in planning a murder: Do not list the name of the person you intend to kill in the contacts on your phone under “sacrifice” or “victim.” (True story.)

9) Home is not a place. Home is people.

10) It is impossible to proofread your own work with 100% accuracy.

11) Age is just a number. I know this because my joints have counted every single year.

12) God has a sense of humor. Ask the young elementary teacher who prayed for patience. The next day? A new student enrolled in her class. Her name was Patience. (True story).

13) You always find the thing that you lost in the last place that you look.

14) Writing is hard work. It requires time and dedication. While writing, I am not free to discuss homework, our plans for next weekend, what to watch on TV or whose turn it is to walk the dog or take out the trash. I may not even hear the non-writer the first three times he or she speaks.

15) To be fair, if I’m reading a good book, I won’t hear the non-reader the first three times he or she speaks, either.

What random thoughts are running through your head today?

Plotting Murder is Easy; Naming Characters is Hard by Connie Berry

2026-05-28T08:30:00.000-04:00

DO YOUR MANUSCRIPTS EVER LOOK LIKE THIS?

It was late on Tuesday night when she walked into the police station at Dempsey and High. Her white hair was in rollers, and she wore a pink chenille robe and flip-flops. “I just killed a man.”

The sergeant on duty stared at her in disbelief. “Who are you?”

“My name is [insert later—haven’t decided yet].”

BRINGING INK TO LIFE IS ONE OF THE JOYS OF WRITING

I love this quote from The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield:

Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with…the characters caught in the fibres of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.

Isn’t this what we want to create? We want our characters to be so memorable, so compelling that they get caught in the minds and hearts of our readers. That’s why names are powerful.

GIVING A CHARACTER A NAME HELPS READERS REMEMBER THEM

Truthfully, not every character deserves a name. Some characters are peripheral—waitresses, neighbors, doctors, librarians, the mail carrier, the secretary. They exist in the world of the novel but only for a moment. They walk onstage, deliver their lines if they have them, and walk off, never to be seen again. But your important characters not only deserve a name; they deserve a name that tells the reader something about them.

FIVE TIPS FOR NAMING FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

1. Choose names that reflect who the character is.

· Ebeneezer Scrooge (harsh, grating)

· Scarlett O’Hara (fiery, melodramatic)

· Huckleberry Finn (folksy)

· Hannibal Lecter (like cannibal)

· Forrest Gump (simple, natural)

· Arthur Gedge (like “hedge,” a gardener)

· Prue Goody (silly, liable to become a victim)

· The Reverend Gideon Wainwright (a bit pompous)

2. Choose names appropriate to the character’s status and time period.

· A scullery maid in Regency England might be Polly but not Keighley

· A powerful executive could be Charles but not Corky

· An academic might be Catherine but not Kandy

· A dock worker in Victorian England could be Jack but not Egbert

· A farmer in postwar Kansas might be Anders but not Adolf

An exception might be if you purposely want to mislead your readers or if a character’s inappropriate name is somehow important to the plot.

3. Don’t overuse trendy names.

I remember reading one time that the nursing homes of the future will be populated by Madisons and Brittanys, Jaydens and Noahs. Don’t date your novel by choosing names just because they are currently popular.

4. Do Google your names.

While names can’t be copyrighted, authors have been sued for libel and invasion of privacy. Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, was sued by her brother’s real-life maid, who claimed Stockett had stolen her name, likeness, and life details. In another case, Haywood Smith, author of The Red Hat Club, was sued by a former friend who claimed that a character in that book shared more than thirty similarities to her and was portrayed as a promiscuous alcoholic. Yikes.

5. Use the whole alphabet.

Don’t confuse your readers by giving characters similar names like Caroline and Christine or Edward and Edwin. We have the entire alphabet to choose from. Some years ago, I developed a simple Character Name Template. I’m delighted to share it with you below.

Authors, what is your best tip for naming characters?

Do you have an all-time favorite character name?

An Interview with Krista Davis by E. B. Davis

2026-05-27T00:30:00.000-04:00

Old Town Virginia’s entertaining guru and occasional sleuth Sophie Winston – a young Martha Stewart in the making – juggles Fourth of July fireworks, a houseful of guests, and homicide in the latest Domestic Diva culinary mystery from New York Times bestselling author Krista Davis.

With a big crowd descending on her Northern Virginia home, it’s a good thing event planner Sophie Winston is an expert at entertaining. Whipping up patriotic pastries is as easy as pie for her, though meeting the man her widowed Aunt Melly just impulsively married in Las Vegas is a little more awkward. Especially when Melly’s longtime, now-heartbroken secret admirer is there too, which could lead to some fireworks.

But the house party really gets explosive when Sophie’s favorite tour guide falls victim to a killer—and evidence points to Sophie’s own father. Will DNA really incriminate her dad? And what’s the real story with her new uncle-by-marriage and the mysterious pal he’s brought along with him? Some of the secrets Sophie’s discovering are raising flags—and while the police department casts suspicion on her father, she has to declare her independence as a detective to find the real culprit, and serve justice along with her red, white, and blue cupcakes . . .

Amazon.com

Krista Davis’s Domestic Diva mystery series never gets old for me. It’s more like coming home to friends and family. The Diva Hosts a Murderer is the nineteenth book in the series and was released yesterday. The story takes place over the Fourth of July in Old Town Alexandria. I was glad for the heat given off in the book since it’s been a cold spring, and it made me long for the warmer days of summer, soon to come, but not soon enough!

Second-chance romances versus the single life seem to be a topic that Krista explores for the middle and older characters in this book. It’s an interesting topic with no one answer as the characters find. And there are a lot of characters because Sophie is hosting her family: mother, father, sister, plus an aunt with her newly-wed husband and his friend, along with two men from Sophie’s hometown of Berryville, VA, where her family still lives. With that crowd, even a domestic diva can find being the perfect hostess problematic.

Please welcome Krista Davis back to WWK! E. B. Davis

When I started to read, I thought this was the first book in which you showed Sophie’s family. But over the years/books, you must have brought them into the story. Did you?

They were in the first two books and then occasionally showed up in holiday books.

Does Hannah, Sophie’s sister, still live with her parents in Berryville?

Hannah has been living in Berryville but not with her parents. She’s been in transition, spending a lot of time in Old Town, but not with Sophie!

Is Sophie being nosy by wanting Hannah to account for her whereabouts in the wee hours of the morning or is she just being an older sister?

Sophie lets her sister be an adult and do her own thing. But when someone comes home closer to the crack of dawn, and the bars closed at 2AM, it’s natural to wonder where she has been.

Sophie and Hannah don’t seem to have much in common. Is Sophie the extrovert and Hanna the introvert?

They just have different interests. Sophie loves entertaining, after all, she’s a professional event planner. But Hannah is a computer whiz.

Nina’s pathologist husband is usually off testifying somewhere. Although he doesn’t stay for long, he does make an appearance. Has he been in other books before?

He makes his sole appearance in this book! After all, it’s a holiday so he’s finally home for a few days.

Why does Officer Wong dismiss Sophie’s older neighbor Dollie’s account of seeing a dead man in her house?

Dollie has a record of calling the police to report sounds like creaking floors and footsteps in the night. But there’s never anyone there and no sign of a break-in, so the police think she has an active imagination. Her family has owned that house for generations, so there’s always the possibility of ghosts or just a creaky old house.

Are the Masonic Temple and the Apothecary Museum real and open to the public?

Yes, they are! Old Town Alexandria is often on lists of great places to visit. Good food, lovely old architecture, and loads of history. One of the popular restaurants was a hospital during the Civil War. And for history buffs, Alexandria found itself between the South and the North, so it was packed with spies!

Why did Natasha throw a 1820s costume party?

The 250^th celebration of the Declaration of Independence was coming up. Natasha was all in with a huge party. She asked guests to dress in the type of clothes people would have been wearing at the time. Even the menus were based on a typical dinner in the 1820s. Natasha always has a scheme in mind and this is another one of them.

What was the story about burying politicians in unmarked graves so their enemies wouldn’t find them and then the locations of the unmarked graves were lost?

The most notable story (true or false, it’s a fun legend) was about John C. Calhoun from Charleston, who was the Vice President of the United States twice. The story goes that he died in Washington DC and was buried there. But due to the Civil War, they feared his foes would disturb his grave, so in the dark of night they dug him up and moved him to an unmarked grave. His wife then asked that he be moved to Charleston, but apparently there was some confusion about which grave he was actually occupying at that point. Eventually, they dug him up again and moved him to Charleston. But he had been born upstate, not in Charleston, so he was buried across the street from the church, in the Stranger’s Graveyard for visitors and non-locals, not in the proper cemetery. Eventually, he was dug up again and finally moved to the St. Philip’s Episcopal Church cemetery.

It's a story that a lot of tour guides enjoy embellishing.

After her father is arrested for murder due to his DNA found on the victim, Sophie researches DNA evidence and finds that it may not be conclusive evidence since DNA could be spread by mere contact and not necessarily during the time of death. Since the victim was Sophie’s family’s tour guide, they were on his bus and in his proximity for several days. Would the police arrest him on just that evidence?

They did, based on the DNA. There is a difference between DNA from skin cells and DNA from blood, which yields a higher quantity and quality.

What is a Dunlap Broadside? Why do they call them that?

Remember that we’re talking about 1776 when there were no computers or copy machines that could copy papers in a minute. So a Philadelphia printer named John Dunlap churned out 200 copies overnight. They were the very first broadly distributed copies of the United States Declaration of Independence, now referred to as Dunlap Broadsides. Today, there are only 26 known copies still in existence. But every once in a while, one turns up in a basement or box of old papers. The last auction of one brought in $8.14 million.

What’s the difference among a buckle, crisp, cobbler, crumble, and a betty?

That’s a tough question. They are all baked desserts with fruit. According to the Farmer’s Almanac and St. Louis Magazine, these are the distinctions. https://bit.ly/42Iwc0H and https://bit.ly/4ulsGFG

A buckle has a streusel topping. The berries are folded into the batter.

A crisp usually has oats in it. Often confused with a crumble. It has a crumb topping and sometimes nuts.

A cobbler has a biscuit topping, sweetened fruit, and spices.

A crumble never contains oats, unless it does. Major confusion on this issue!

A Betty is like a crisp but has no oats. There are crumbs inside as well as on top in a buttery crumb topping.

Whew! Still confused? Me, too. LOL! They’re all delicious!

What’s next for Sophie?

Hmm. I don’t want to reveal any spoilers, but a lot happens in the next book! Stay tuned!

Polish to Perfection by Martha Reed

2026-05-26T05:30:00.000-04:00

“Trim the words but keep the story.” – Martha Reed

This month I enjoyed a challenging writing craft exercise. Answering an open call for a new crime fiction anthology, I decided to take a break from my current novel-length WIP (work-in-progress) and try my hand at quickly drafting something shorter.

The anthology’s stated eligibility guidelines included a maximum threshold of five thousand words. Usually, my short fiction drafts run short, and then I flesh out the story as needed from there. Imagine my surprise when I sat back and discovered that my new draft manuscript clocked in at six thousand words.

Yikes! And this was my short story in its roughest form. Somehow I needed to delete almost twenty percent.

I found the idea of deleting one thousand words daunting. How did I ‘kill my darlings’ and do it?

1. The setting and the reason the characters were gathering was to attend a family wedding. The introductory paragraphs included a description of the protagonist’s trip to get to the wedding and what she saw as she approached the venue. First, I deleted all of that travel description. As the writer, I needed to know the wedding details, but it was unnecessary information for the reader. With this ruthless edit, I dropped the reader straight into the action. Then, in a final desperate act, I deleted the bride. (Never fear, I sent Callie to Aruba to enjoy her honeymoon.)

2. Next, I deleted other unnecessary characters (apologies to Benton Overbeck and the Big House staff members). I needed to shut my eyes to make this edit because I adored reading about these funny and oddball people. I had spent hours having fun imagining them and the trouble they were getting into, especially the hired bagpiper who got caught stealing Junior Senior’s Cuban cigars. In the end, calling the wedding venue ‘a madhouse’ was all the description that the story really needed.

3. I ruthlessly deleted descriptive adjectives. In the original manuscript I created a ‘cozy reading nook’ which included a tasseled silk-upholstered chaise longue plush with needlepointed pillows, a marble fireplace filled with sweet pine logs ready for a rare but chilly Florida winter night, and a Tiffany stained-glass floor lamp. I kept the chaise longue because my protagonist needed something to sit on, but bye-bye Italian marble fireplace and the Tiffany dragonfly lamp.

In the end, after too many delicious pots of coffee and three intensely satisfying days of joyful editing, I hit the mark at 4,998 words.

How about you? Share your editing tricks for trimming those pesky and unnecessary words.

And, in case you’re interested, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Pittsburgh Sisters in Crime is hosting an open call for short crime fiction for “Gold Bridges, Dark Rivers,” our new anthology. Visit our website www.pghsinc.com for the eligibility guidelines, sharpen your pencils, and good luck!

Updates by Nancy L. Eady

2026-05-25T01:00:00.000-04:00

One of the exciting things about a holiday weekend is snatching a couple of hours all to myself to write. Alas, this morning, as I be-bopped into my temporary office (otherwise known as the den sofa), my plans came to a screeching halt when I received the dreaded “update” message. My iPad recently updated itself, and Microsoft, not to be outdone, pushed one out at me as well.

How software companies update my devices has changed over the years. Way back at the beginning, when computers ran off of DOS and we stored data on 5.25 - inch floppy disks, updates didn’t happen automatically. The internet did not exist. If you wanted the newest version of a program, you had to go to a store and buy it. The wisdom of the day was that you never wanted to buy a program when it was just released. You needed to wait at least six months to give the programmer a chance to discover, and fix, all the bugs in the program. Over time, the programs got bigger, which meant that the medium storing them had to hold more data. At first, the programs were on large floppy discs; then the vendors moved to smaller, plastic, solid “floppy” discs; then CDs.

As the internet continued to grow, programs were sold online. The first Windows version sold online was Windows 8. We could still avoid updates by refusing to buy the newest program but the writing was on the wall. Even once updates and security patches started being sent over the internet, we could choose whether we wanted to update immediately or be reminded later. I guess too many of us asked to be reminded later and never got around to updating, because we no longer get to choose.

Now, updates begin automatically when you start or turn off your computer. If it happens when I turn off my computer, and I am trying to close out a laptop to head home, I receive dire warnings inferring that I will destroy the laptop and most of the Eastern Seaboard if I dare to turn it off without letting those updates get installed. One day, though, I was trying to head home, and I did the unthinkable—turned the computer off in the middle of the update. The Eastern Seaboard and my laptop survived. Windows got a little snippy about forcing the update on me the next time I opened the laptop.

Given my personal history, I understand why software manufacturers have had to ramp up their methods of getting consumers to upgrade. Without their coercion, I would still use Windows 98 and save data on floppy discs. But I wish they’d avoid such updates on holiday weekends.

What’s the longest amount of time you’ve ever been help up by a Windows or other update? Am I the only person who disabled the “new” Adobe Acrobat look to go back to “classic” as soon as that update finished? Mac users, does Apple manage your updates the way they do the iPads?

Staycation Writing Retreat by Annette Dashofy

2026-05-24T00:00:00.000-04:00

As I’m writing this, my husband has just left for a four-day fishing trip with his buddy. That leaves me at home with Kensi Kitty, who some of you know was very sick a few weeks back but is doing great now.

This means I have four days with no meals to prep, no questions to answer, and no “Can you give me a hand for a minute” requests. Yes, I do have to eat, but I have a curbside grocery pickup this afternoon, consisting of microwave meals.

My to-do list, beyond the grocery run, is simple: WRITE.

I’m currently at 59,000 words of what I unaffectionately call my Frankenbook. It’s basically a hot mess. I’ve written, rewritten, copied and pasted scenes from one chapter to another, and slashed large chunks completely. Okay, not completely. I have a separate “clip file” where I stash those cut pages, just in case. I have high hopes of adding several thousand more words before my husband rolls back into the driveway.

I’m not giving a solid wordcount goal because lately the Universe has been looking at my plans, only to laugh hysterically and say, “Hold my beer.” I will be happy with what I get.

Some writers (myself included) go on writing retreats away from home. I’ve attended group retreats with my Sisters in Crime chapter at various rental houses.

Pgh SinC Retreat House

I’ve also driven nearly nine hours to join writing friends, including the late Ramona Long, at a spiritual retreat center run by nuns, who didn’t seem to mind that crime writers were doing fictional dastardly deeds while holed up on their property.

Spiritual Retreat Center near Philadelphia

Dinner at Ramona's retreat
with Martha Reed & Edith Maxwell

My writing nook at Ramona's retreat

One big benefit of a staycation writing retreat is no travel time and no sticker shock from filling up the gas tank to get there. Another benefit is having my personal library of research books within easy reach.

I do miss the camaraderie of sipping wine with fellow mystery authors after a long day of torturing our characters. The only living being I can discuss plot holes with is Kensi Kitty, who frankly doesn’t care about anything but getting pets and snacks.

By the time you read this, my husband will be home, and I’ll be doing mountains of his laundry. And hopefully, I’ll be considerably closer to the end of the Frankenbook.

Dear readers, have you ever taken a staycation? Did you enjoy it? And fellow Writers Who Kill, have you ever attended a writing retreat, either alone, with other authors, or simply holed up in your house? Did you find it productive?

How Fast Do You Write?

2026-05-23T03:00:00.000-04:00

By Kait Carson

“The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by.” — E. B. White

“There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.” Ernest Hemingway

“Writing is easy: All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.” — Gene Fowler

I always knew I wanted to be a writer. My parents were great readers and my dad taught me to read at age 2. In his defense, teaching me to read was his best offense. He hated the Prince Valiant comics in the Sunday paper and, being possessed of curly hair, I loved the Prince’s stick-straight do. Toddlers pitch epic fits, and he turned mine into a teaching moment. Once I discovered that all those marks on the page made words, I was hooked. And I wanted to make my own marks.

By the time I turned nine, I had read Little Women and set my goal higher. I proclaimed I would be just like Jo March and write for a living. Every day after school, I would hurry home, put on the remains of my mother’s wedding dress (she had cut the train for chair covers years before, but kept the gown), pull out my fountain pens and ink, and write. I don’t remember any of the stories, but I remember lots of gigantic exclamation points.

Writing, I decided, was easy. I mean, look at all the books out there. How hard could it be? A monster stroke of luck confirmed my assessment. I wrote a letter to the editor, and the publication resulted in an offer of representation. I accepted. The poor guy never knew I was twelve when I signed the contract. What followed were sales to various teen fashion and lifestyle magazines. All that changed when I went to college. My agent passed away, and I put writing aside in the name of fun and experience.

The writing bug remained dormant until I hit middle age when it returned with a vengeance. In my memory, the only requirement for churning out stories was sitting at a typewriter. No plotting, planning, or even a topic required to unleash the flow of words. I can’t say if maturity, or computers and keyboards changed my style, but suddenly, the Gene Fowler quote made perfect sense.

Writing, I discovered, is not only hard, it’s glacial. At least my writing. I have writing friends who write ten to sixteen books every year. Good books, well-written and edited books, and since I’m writing this in 2026, I need to emphasize the books are NOT the product of AI. How can I know that? Easy. They’ve been keeping up the pace since before AI was a gleam in Silicon Valley’s eye. These authors are simply fast writers. And I envy them.

As for me, my writing speed stalls at a book every two years. At first, I blamed the day job, but that hasn’t been an issue since 2020. And I’ve taken steps to speed up the process: classes, how-to books, bullet-point outlines, detailed outlines, no outlines but shooting from the cuff. Nothing works. I putter along at the same snaillike pace.

If you’re looking for a big reveal here about how I solved my problem, you’ve come to the wrong place. I finally accepted that every writer has their own style and pace, and wishing does not change that. All of this introspection and speaking with another writer friend offered a clue to my less than snappy pace, and it’s one I’m fine with. Against all writing advice, I edit as I write and refuse to leave any chapter until it’s as polished as I can make it. Slow in the execution, but fast in the editing.

Have I gotten faster? Yes. Part of that is learning the craft, but most of it is consistency, and it’s possible that my secret sauce is working on more than one project at a time. Right now, I have two books in the works, and I get up every day looking forward to reconnecting with the characters and stories of each book. Variety is the spice of my creativity.

I will never write sixteen books in a year. Heck, I can’t type that fast!

Writers, do you stress over your production? Readers, how do you feel about slow writers?

Kait Carson writes the Hayden Kent Mysteries, set in the Fabulous Florida Keys, and is at work on a new mystery series set in her adopted state of Maine. Her short fiction has been nationally published in the True Confessions magazines and in Woman’s World. Kait’s short story, “Gutted, Filleted, and Fried”, appeared in the Silver Falchion Award-nominated Guppy Anthology Hook, Line, and Sinker. Her nonfiction essay was included in the Agatha Award-winning book Writing the Cozy Mystery. She is a former President of the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and a current member of Sisters in Crime and Guppies.

Living Vicariously by Nancy L. Eady

2026-05-22T01:00:00.000-04:00

Marilyn Levinson’s post yesterday about how she decides on the victims in her novels got me thinking about how I choose my characters in toto. My sleuths and their supporting cast tend to be individuals I create, although sometimes they may inherit individual traits from the people I admire, and a collection of my own and other’s insecurities, to humanize them. Some insecurities are universal—who hasn’t wished they were prettier, more handsome, had different hair, had a differently shaped body, or had a pony as a child? (Okay, I made the last one up. Neither my parents nor my husband’s parents bought either of us a pony, and we turned out okay. At least we think so.)

I have a hit list in the back of my mind I am working through. People who harmed people I love are on it. The physician who was rude to one of my dearest friends at a particularly vulnerable time is on it, too. Anyone who I’ve seen take joy in tearing someone else down is on it. I try to obey the stricture to “turn the other cheek,” but does it count when I take vengeance on someone on paper in a fictional setting? What fun to make them villains or victims!

Redemption can be a theme as well. I combined several high school nemeses into one character, put her through painful life experiences, and forced her to apologize to my sleuth for systematically bullying her in high school. Then I made them best friends.

I also live vicariously through the books I read. When I’m stressed financially, as happens to all of us from time to time, it’s a relief to read novels where the main characters never have to worry about money. When I’m scared by the madness in the real world, I sink into a good book and enter a different world. When my favorite college football team is sinking into a losing season, I pick up a “Win One for the Gipper” book—Whoops! I got carried away. I can’t erase a bad football season with a book. I have to tough it out and hope next year is better. A character flaw on my part, I’m sure.

The magic of being a writer comes in the ability to channel our pains, irritations, joys, rewards, and sorrows into fictional characters and send them on journeys that make our readers feel better. And if we knock off a few bad guys vicariously along the way, that’s a bonus.

Who Will Live and Who Will Die? by Marilyn Levinson

2026-05-21T01:30:00.000-04:00

Until recently, I've never given much thought to how I select the murder victims in my mysteries. I don't usually go along with the popular cozy trope of killing off the character everyone loves to hate because part of maintaining suspense is keeping readers wondering who will be the first victim. But I will confess I couldn't wait to do away with my most recent murder victim because he has harmed so many innocent people.

There are many reasons why characters become homicide victims. In some of my books, the murder has occurred before page one. The first victim in Death Overdue, the first book in my Haunted Library series, died fifteen years ago, and the second victim is murdered to prevent him from announcing the killer's identity. In Giving Up the Ghost, my ghost Cameron Leeds wants Gabbie Meyerson to find out who murdered him in the previous year.

Very often a murder victim has no idea why she's been targeted. In Death on Dickens Island, Missy Faraday's killer hears Missy asking questions about her family background and feels threatened enough to murder her.

Jealousy is often a reason why a killer offs his or her victim. In A Murderer Among Us, Claire Weill has no idea that her killer's in love with her husband.

Blackmailers sometimes fall prey to their victims. That's what happens to Ilana Reingold in Checked Out for Murder, the fourth Haunted Library book, when she sees the murderer kill someone and tries to blackmail her.

Lastly, some victims are simply unlucky and are murdered by accident. Which is what happens in Murder a la Christie when poor Sylvia Morris drinks the poisoned refreshment meant for someone else.

A final word: I have killed off a few characters I'd grown to love, but I never murder my sleuth or anyone close to her.

How do you decide who will be murdered in your mysteries?

Killer Questions - Favorite Home Improvement or Cooking Show

2026-05-20T00:00:00.004-04:00

Killer Questions – Favorite Home Improvement or Cooking Show

You can tell a lot about people by the television shows they watch. Let’s see what you think about our respective favorite home improvement or cooking shows.

Martha Reed - Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.

Susan Van Kirk – The Great British Baking Show

Debra H. Goldstein - Top Chef

James M. Jackson – Never watched; never will.

Annette Dashofy – Farmhouse Fixer. I want them to come to my house! Also, I want to move into one of the houses they’ve already fixed up.

Heather Weidner - Maine Cabin Masters, Motel Rescue, and a blast from the past, Trading Spaces

Sarah E. Burr - I will always have a soft spot for the original Fixer Upper with Chip and Joanna Gaines. Joanna has my kind of style, and I love how they design houses.

Kait Carson - House Hunters, Log Cabin Living. I have never watched the Great British Bakeoff, but it’s on my bucket list.

E. B. Davis - I watch cooking and home improvement clips on Facebook. My favorites, Ina Garten, Joshua Weissman, and Alton Brown. There are a lot of fixer upper shows, but Julie Jones, designer—space planner is my favorite.

Margaret S. Hamilton - Love it Or List It

K.M. Rockwood - Can't remember ever having watched one.

Korina Moss - The Great British Baking Show is by far my favorite cooking show. It’s so cozy and heartwarming.

Lori Roberts Herbst - Fixer Upper. I don’t watch often, but it always makes me smile.

Grace Topping - Nancy Birtwhistle's online posts. Nancy won one season of the Great British Bakeoff and gives terrific baking advice. She also features natural, homemade cleaning products for everyday use.

Shari Randall - My favorite is the Great British Baking Show. So inspirational! How I would love a Paul Hollywood handshake!

Mary Dutta - I don’t watch any.

Centering and Focusing

2026-05-19T00:30:00.000-04:00

by Paula Gail Benson

Lately, I’ve been facing days with a lot of tasks coming to me at once. I’ve had to clarify the order and set priorities. Unfortunately, I’ve often been told all matters are urgent and do the best I can. So, I do, and hope for the best.

After a flurry of activity, writing is a much stiller, calmer course. Its quietness in fact can be disconcerting and make me wonder, am I able to do this? Can I be alone with my thoughts and create when no one is imposing requirements upon me?

The empty page becomes a frightening thing because it makes no demands upon me. It simply reflects the demands I make upon myself: to produce, and hopefully to do so brilliantly.

When I dispel the feeling of possible failure and convince myself to write, I begin to recognize what a gift it gives me. The time and words are mine to explore. I can center myself on the topic I select and then focus on the elements as I uncover them.

Thanks to the Internet, I can stop briefly to look up definitions; historical, mechanical, or scientific facts; or verify that I’m remembering something correctly. Then I push myself back to my waiting page and develop what I’ve determined to create.

At this moment, I don’t let the pressure of finishing or summarizing make me frantic or turn to AI. These will be my words carefully considered, my discovery new and fresh.

I may be able to visit a place I’ve never seen or return to a familiar spot. Like an actor, I can walk around in a character’s shoes, focusing on what I might fail to notice in the hustle and bustle of everyday existence—maybe even regretting that I might not ordinarily see it.

With pen in hand, I feel the flow of the creative process through my body. I guess I feel it also when my fingers are poised over a keyboard, just in a different way.

I am centered. I am focused. I pursue the creative process alone, but hopefully I will share the results of that process with others.

How is it for you when you come to write after being involved in another experience?

When the Groove Comes Back or Being in the Zone

2026-05-18T00:00:00.001-04:00

When the Groove Comes Back or Being in the Zone by Debra H. Goldstein

Since I moved to Atlanta on July 4, 2025, I’ve been busy participating in social activities that have allowed me to make new friends and spending quality family time with my little readers who live here. I’ve learned canasta, perfected my Mah Jongg, eaten out more than my waistline needs, worked with a trainer to balance the eating out, babysat, and also attended numerous lectures, musical events, theatrical performances, religious service and study groups, and participated in various volunteer opportunities. What I haven’t been doing, which has created quite a bit of anguish for me, is writing.

Oh, I’ve performed by post writing and other duties for the four blogs I am part of (Writers Who Kill, The Stiletto Gang, Booklovers Bench – Where Readers Are Winners, and my own, It’s Not Always a Mystery). I have faithfully gotten out my monthly newsletter (which you can subscribe to from my website, https://www.DebraHGoldstein.com … while there, you

can also download a free copy of the cookbook Kensington made from my Sarah Blair series – Simple Recipes for the Sometimes Sleuth) and responded to emails from readers. What I haven’t done is write.

Although I have several short stories being published this year, until the beginning of this month, I’d only written one new one since I’ve been in Atlanta. Two weeks ago, I stopped fretting about not writing. I took a week off to simply read for fun. I relaxed. When I decided to rejoin the real world, I saw an open call for a story. It sparked an idea. I spent days researching the background materials I would need to write the story and then I sat in my favorite chair, with show music playing, and wrote.

The words flowed. I lost track of time. I was in that special zone. When I finished, I put it aside to edit the next day. Several re-readings and revisions later, I submitted the story. I smiled. My groove is back!

The Joy of Revisions by Sarah E. Burr

2026-05-17T00:30:00.000-04:00

There is a particular kind of relief that comes with finishing a first draft. The story exists. The characters have made it from the opening scene to the final reveal. The clues are on the page, the body has been found, the suspects have been gathered, and the killer has been named. For a mystery writer, that alone feels like a triumph.

But for me, the real joy begins in revision.

I’m currently working on revisions for the next Glenmyre Whim Mystery, and it has reminded me how much I love this stage of the writing process. For me, drafting is discovery. It’s messy, instinctive, and sometimes a little nightmarish. Revision is where I get to take everything I uncovered during that first pass and shape it into something stronger, clearer, and more emotionally resonant.

With the Glenmyre Whim Mysteries, revision feels especially rewarding because these books are built on several layers at once. There is the central mystery, with all the suspects, motives, secrets, and red herrings that need to hold together. But there is also Hazel Wickbury’s personal journey, the history of the Glenmyre family, the magical rules of their “whims”, and the relationships that give the series its heart.

Those pieces don’t always arrive neatly in the first draft. Sometimes a clue appears too early. Sometimes a character’s motivation needs more pressure behind it. Sometimes a scene does the job mechanically but lacks emotional weight. And sometimes, the draft gives me a gift I didn’t fully understand while I was writing it. A passing line becomes important. A minor interaction reveals a deeper tension. A character says something that points toward the heart of the book before I’ve consciously identified it.

Revision is where I get to recognize those gifts and make them intentional.

One of the most satisfying parts of revising a mystery is tightening the structure. Mystery readers are wonderfully sharp. They notice details. They remember what was said three chapters ago, sometimes even three books ago. They follow the emotional logic of a character’s behavior and the practical logic of a clue trail. That means every scene needs to earn its place. During revisions, I look closely at what each chapter is doing. Is it advancing the investigation? Deepening character? Increasing tension? Revealing something about the world? Ideally, a scene does more than one of these things at once.

That process can be demanding, but it’s also deeply satisfying. There is a real pleasure in seeing the machinery of the mystery begin to work more smoothly. A clue lands better. A suspect becomes more layered. A twist feels less like a trick and more like an inevitable surprise. The goal is not simply to hide the answer from the reader. It’s to create a fair and engaging puzzle that rewards attention while still delivering a satisfying reveal.

Hazel’s adventures also ask me to think carefully about how the magical elements interact with the mystery. Her whim and her family lore cannot function as shortcuts. Hazel, Poppy, and Holden (the three living Glenmyres) need rules, limits, and consequences. In revision, I pay close attention to whether their magical abilities add depth and tension rather than solve problems too easily. The magic should complicate their lives as much as it helps them understand it.

That balance matters to me. I want whims to feel meaningful, but I also want Hazel’s intelligence, courage, and persistence to drive the story. She is not passive in her own series. She is a business owner, a niece, a friend, a partner, and an amateur sleuth learning how to carry the weight of what she knows. Revisions give me the chance to sharpen that emotional arc and make sure Hazel is not simply reacting to events, but growing through them.

There is something deeply rewarding about returning to a manuscript with fresh eyes and seeing not only what needs fixing, but what is already working. Revision is not punishment for an imperfect draft. It is an invitation to make the book more fully itself.

And with every pass-through, I get to understand Hazel, Poppy, and the Glenmyre legacy a little better. For me, that is the joy of revision: taking the raw material of inspiration and shaping it into a story that feels polished, purposeful, and alive.

And speaking of a story that feels alive, check out the book trailer Get a Candle on Crime below!

AI and Highways by Nancy L. Eady

2026-05-15T01:00:00.000-04:00

The Florida Everglades are suffering from a surfeit of invasive Burmese pythons. Because the pythons have no natural enemies there—except maybe alligators, although pythons busily digesting alligators have been found—the snakes are destroying the already fragile ecology there.

The state has tried many tactics to deal with them. I say “deal with them,” because Florida won’t let you shoot the things. Instead, they have to be caught and “humanely disposed of.” If you catch a note of skepticism in my tone, you’re not mistaken, but that’s a topic for another day. (I am not, and never will be, an ophiophilist.)

One of the more unusual tactics was the dispatch of robotic marsh rabbits, solar-powered, designed to have the movements and heat signatures, and various other characteristics of live marsh rabbits. The rabbits, kept in clear pens, were to sense pythons drawing close and send out a signal to call a snake disposal expert (whatever one is called) to retrieve them.

It worked at first, but there was a flaw. The same rabbits that attracted the pythons also attracted alligators. The pythons weren’t able to destroy the pens the robots were in, but an alligator? When a six- to ten-foot alligator crashed into a pen, the pen became toast, as did the roughly $4000 robotic rabbit.

But then a bright soul realized that even if the rabbits were toast, the data generated from them was not. The scientists fed the data to a powerful AI program, which discovered a hidden pattern. The pythons and other predators were following regular routes through the waters of the Everglades, slithering superhighways. Armed with this information, the python hunters have been able to find and remove more pythons than they were before. This doesn’t mean that the python problem is solved, but it is a step in the right direction.

Now press pause.

As you may remember, my family recently moved. My daily commute was cut down from two hours each way to one hour each way. My route is sixty-odd miles, straight interstate, between one small city and another medium-sized city separated by farmland. Piece of cake, right?

Resume play.

No. The interstate is two lanes in both directions and should have been three-laned on each side two decades ago. It connects Atlanta to I-65 and thus Birmingham to the north and New Orleans (via Mobile and I-10) to the south and west, all huge metropolitan areas. Like any other bottleneck, when more traffic squeezes through than the original design anticipated, strange things happen.

Like many people, I rely on my phone to help guide me through the ever-swirling fog of traffic. Siri is exceptionally good at giving me alternate routes when there is a traffic snarl due to an accident or construction.

The thought hit me this afternoon—with every user, Siri is collecting bunches of data points about travelers on my stretch of interstate, just like the robot rabbits in Florida. What kind of hidden patterns might an AI program sorting through that mass of data discover?

And then my brain tries to spin that idea into a story…

Amanda Flower's Because I Could Not Stop For Death

2026-05-14T02:00:00.001-04:00

By Margaret S. Hamilton

Amanda Flower’s historical mystery featuring the poet Emily Dickinson is the first in a proposed series. The book takes place in winter and spring, 1855, and is set in two locations, the Dickinson family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, and at a hotel in Washington, D.C., when Emily, her mother, and sister Lavinia visit Emily’s congressman father while Congress is in session.

The book is narrated by the household second maid, Willa Noble, an intelligent, diligent, and educated older teen, who is the guardian of her younger brother, Henry. Emily is twenty-four, an avid gardener and poetry writer, usually accompanied by her Newfoundland dog, Carlo. Emily selects Willa as the new family maid. Willa soon becomes Emily’s companion, and while solving the death of Henry, her confidant.

Willa’s narrative tone is perfect, walking a narrow line between mid-nineteenth century colloquial speech and modern English. Flower distills a veritable mountain of research into the sensory details of Amherst in the middle of winter, and then the hustle-bustle of Washington, D.C., as spring emerges.

Emily is not yet a recluse. In the book, Flower lays the fictional groundwork for her later poems. Emily is bright, well-educated, enjoys a correspondence with friends and relatives, and is an advocate for justice. When Willa is devastated by the death of her younger brother, Emily pounces on the uncertainty surrounding the events of Henry’s death. With Willa and Carlo at her side, Emily launches an investigation which leads to identifying the true culprit.

Flower focuses on three elements of Amherst society: class, status, and politics. Emily has enjoyed the best education offered to young women in the mid-nineteenth century, including attending what would become Mount Holyoke College. Mr. Dickinson is a prosperous lawyer in Amherst and a Whig representative in Congress. Emily’s brother, Austin, is a Harvard-trained lawyer, engaged to Emily’s best friend, Susan Gilbert.

In 1855, the Whig party is neither pro-slavery nor anti-slavery. Henry’s death is connected to the actions of local citizens assisting slaves fleeing north on the Underground Railroad. Complicating matters are the bounty hunters who routinely grab both escaping slaves and free Black citizens and sell them. Combined with the chaos of local residents thwarting the actions of the bounty hunters, the coverup of Henry’s death blows up.

I enjoyed Amanda Flower’s historic cozy and anticipate Emily’s next case in the Emily Dickinson Mystery series.

Readers, do you enjoy historical fiction, particularly fiction that focuses on real characters?

Writers, do you write historical fiction, and if so, do you include real characters?

Margaret S. Hamilton is the author of forty short stories, the first two books in the Jericho Mystery series, and a novella, Erased, set in 1972.

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