As writers, we all own up (or should) to the things that influence us in a positive way. For example, I acknowledge the debt I owe to Robert B. Parker for my understanding of how to make a first-person narrative entertaining. But what about negative influences? What about the things that we tried to incorporate into our own writing that … Read More
Low Road: Donald Goines and urban tragedy
I discovered the novels of Donald Goines when I worked for a book distributor that sold collections to libraries. Often this meant orders for all the books by a particular author, as was the case with Goines, whose novels bore vivid titles like Whoreson, Black Gangster, Swamp Man and White Man’s Justice, Black Man’s Grief. Goines’ first novel appeared in … Read More
The Finn Substitution
Some have brewed a ha-ha about a new edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that removes what is euphemistically called “the N word” and replaces it with the word, “slave.” This has brought all kinds of interesting trivia to light (“the N word” is used 219 times in Finn, “slave” is not actually a synonym for it, … Read More
The Loving Dead: zombies with one thing on their minds
When it comes to the living dead, I’m strictly vanilla. I want my zombies slow, shambling, mindless and prolific. I have no time for zombies that run, or speak, or suffer from a virus and aren’t really zombies. So I began reading Amelia Beamer’s The Loving Dead with a bit of trepidation, since her zombies are not only virus-spawned (and … Read More
Helsinki Homicide: ice cold crime without "girl" in the title
Scandanavian thrillers are all the rage right now thanks to Steig Larsson, but I’ve been a fan of this sub-genre since Peter Hoeg’s novel Smilla’s Sense of Snow and the original Norwegian version of the film Insomnia. Larsson’s Millenium trilogy may be the Hunger Games of its moment, but recently I discovered another Scandanavian author, from Finland, whose crime novels … Read More
If it’d been an Ellison, it woulda bit me
There’s an old bit of wisdom that says, roughly paraphrased, if you pick up a snake and it bites you, it’s not the snake’s fault. My wife is an avid science fiction reader, but she’s never been to an SF convention. When her favorite SF author Harlan Ellison was announced as the guest of honor for local convention MadCon, she … Read More
"The process is its own reward" *
“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” –W. Edwards Deming I get asked about my writing process a fair bit, so I thought I’d share an example of how I work, from initial draft to final revision. I’m not making any claims that this is the only way, or even … Read More
I walked into a bar…and he saw the end
Recently I read a novel that annoyed me no end with its capricious disregard of its own genre rules. And I worry that in it, I saw the end of the current boom of fantasy/paranormal novels crossed with the hardboiled detective form, which depresses me because hey, I write that kind of book. The novel (unidentified here because it’s symptomatic … Read More
The profit motive (or, the prophet motive)
Recently on my Facebook/Twitter feed I posted a bit of Roger Ebert’s review of the new Julia Roberts movie, Eat Pray Love: “[To like the movie] I guess you have to belong to the narcissistic subculture of Woo-Woo.” I quoted it because I found it funny, and should make clear right now that I have neither read nor seen the book/movie … Read More
"The Somber Enemy"
Thanks to Rita Mae Reese for suggesting this blog post. One side-effect of being a full-time writer is that I’m also the stay-at-home parent for my two sons, ages 5 and 2. They impinge on every single moment of my day, especially the younger one, since he’s underfoot almost constantly. My wife works in an office 45 minutes away and … Read More