Creating Characters Readers Love to Care About The Hardest Trick of Them All Have you ever finished a book and immediately regretted that you were done? That you wish you hadn’t read so fast and could open the pages once more and there would magically be another chapter you didn’t realize was there? An […]
The Key to Creating Great Characters Among the great strokes of good fortune — and there were many junctures where I could have gone awry — was the decision to write about, via fiction, my small marina family at Tarpon Bay, Sanibel Island, Florida, where I was a fishing guide from 1974 to 1987. This […]
Giving Characters Their Own Voice As long as there have been creative writing classes, aspiring authors have received the same advice: Write what you know. Unfortunately, unless you know a lot — and even if you do — that advice will only take you so far. You’ll still face the issue of building […]
Top Ten favorite fictional mystery series characters that haven’t made it to American Television I split my time between writing books and writing for television, so I’m always on the prowl for a thriller or mystery series to pitch to the networks. I look for a strong central character, someone audiences will want to watch […]
Tom Ripley Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley No other character in fiction has creeped me out as much as Tom Ripley. Patricia Highsmith is the master of suspense in my book, and she created a character that still haunts me. Her secret is making you love Ripley before you realize what a monster he […]
Award-winning British women’s fiction author, Liz Fielding, turned to crime writing during the Covid pandemic “lockdown” when she finally got down to writing a story – inspired by an Open University documentary — that had been in her head for some years. Murder Among the Roses is shortlisted for this year’s People’s Book Prize – […]
Top Ten Fictional Women Detectives and PIs GUEST POST FOR THE STRAND FROM KARA THOMAS AUTHOR OF LOST TO DUNE ROAD, Thomas & Mercer Crime fiction has come a long way in terms of how women characters are represented—gone are the days where women were either office secretaries or nagging wives to the male […]
“For a quarter of a century, The Strand has not only been bringing fabulous contemporary mystery and thriller stories to readers—but it has also managed, on an astonishingly regular basis, to dig up unpublished and long-lost stories by the titans of the past, including James M. Cain, Shirley Jackson, Raymond Chandler…” —Douglas Preston (New York […]
Few things in life are as enjoyable as getting sucked into a great thriller. Those late nights spent in the dark glued to my e-reader provide the kind of twisty, adventurous fun that keeps my heart racing just enough. (My kind of thrill ends when I take off my glasses.) With a mix of well- […]
Bestselling author Tana French’s THE HUNTER is “an absorbing crime yarn” 1.Tell us about your upcoming novel, The Hunter. It’s a heat-wave summer in the little West of Ireland village of Ardnakelty. Cal Hooper, who took early retirement from the Chicago police force and moved there looking for peace, has found it: he’s built a […]