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Observations by a Newbie Editor
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I just finished reading nearly 100 short stories for an upcoming publication, the third crime-fiction anthology (charity fundraiser) for me as an editor. Writers agonize over editorial rejection, but editors do, too. Here are some things to keep in mind that may help you as a writer or an editor…
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Review: Webinar with S. A. Cosby
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Rock and a Hard Place Press sponsored a webinar with S A Cosby recently, and it was full of great information! If you get a chance to sit in on a panel, class, or webinar with Mr. Cosby, do it. Why? Because Cosby: Is more well read in and out…
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Why I Bailed on Bouchercon 2021
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It felt like stabbing a friend. Like ghosting my own birthday party. So why did I bail on Bouchercon yesterday? There’s 100 reasons anyone does anything. 99 perfectly good ones, and the real reason. The 99 perfectly good ones are neatly encapsulated in any real news reporting: infection rates up…
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Crime Writers to the Front Lines, Please
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Democracy is under attack, but we crime writers seem oddly silent. Sure, we’re tweeting, but at retail scale, does that ever move the needle? Remember when McCarthy & Cohn were trying to undermine democracy? How writers like Arthur Miller refused to name names? How Dashiell Hammett was blacklisted and went…
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Why Does That Happen?
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by Mysti Berry Originally published by The Short Mystery Fiction Society When I was a baby crime writer, literally following writers like Gigi Pandian, Juliet Blackwell, and Sophie Littlefield around, absorbing everything I could from them and from conferences and SinC or MWA meetings, I would often wonder “why does…
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Suspense vs. Thriller
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I’m trying to sort out the difference between suspense and thriller before I appear on a Thriller panel at a mystery conference. You never understand something until you write about it, so here goes: Genre vs. Technique This is the first thing to sort out—are we talking about a literary…
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Bloody Scotland, I Miss You!
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I’m not swearing, honest. It’s the name of the conference: Bloody Scotland. In Scotland, they sell more crime books than any other genre (even romance, which is the top seller in the United States). So it was my great honor to visit the Bloody Scotland conference in Stirling last September. They…
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Bloody Scotland, Here I Come!
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In a few days I climb aboard a plane for Stirling, UK, home of the Bloody Scotland crime writers conference.