This book came about from a compilation of interviews from your Huffington Post series “Writer to Writer” could you describe what the process of interviewing 46 authors looks like? It was a very interesting process. I interviewed one author each week. Over the course of five years, I interviewed about 200 authors, a few of […]
Category Archives: Authors
Wastrels and Layabouts: Six Novels with Charming, Workshy Anti-heroes by Peter Mann
Writers are great shirkers, as everyone suspects and all writers know. Our patron saint is Bartleby of Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, whose great refusal, “I would prefer not to,” is our battle cry against the world of workaday drudgery. For why work when you can write? Of course, it takes discipline and craft, those […]
Exclusive Interview With Leslie Klinger
The Strand Magazine is a huge fan of Leslie Klinger, in this exclusive interview we got the opportunity to speak to one of the most notable authorities of the Sherlock Holmes novels. An expert of classic genre fiction, Leslie Klinger tells us all about his start in the world of the crime genre and his […]
Dangerous Secrets Reveal The Truths In A Marriage – “My Darling Husband” By Kimberly Belle
Rewriting real-life tragedy I have led what most people would consider a charmed life. I grew up solidly middle class, in a nice home with two loving parents and a slew of beloved pets. I am college educated, financially comfortable, a happily married mother to two healthy children who’ve grown into kind and thriving adults. […]
Understanding the Accidental Killer by Rebecca Taylor
When I was sixteen and just about to get my driver’s license, my friend’s mother made a surprising confession. When she was a young adult, she made a right-hand turn on a green light when a woman on a bicycle suddenly rode in front of her moving car. She hit the woman, launching her body […]
6 Books That Inspire Me by James Swallow
I’ve always felt that to write books, you need to love books; one thing follows the other! But the inspiration to tell a story comes from many sources, and one that’s always been key to my work are the books that surround me, the books I grew up reading and the works created by the […]
Exclusive with Shawn Nocher, author of A Hand to Hold in Deep Water
Exclusive with Shawn Nocher, author of A Hand to Hold in Deep Water By Emily S. Martin TSM: What provided the inspiration for your book? Shawn Nocher (SN): The first chapter was originally a short story written years ago in a workshop. Over the next decade, I spent a lot of time imagining an entire backstory […]
Interview with Sandra Brown
Interview with Sandra Brown By Anna Shura Sandra Brown is the woman behind over 70 New York Times bestsellers and her recent 83rd publication: Blind Tiger. Her novels range from romance to historical fiction to suspense/thriller. In her exclusive interview with The Strand, Sandra Brown discusses finding the inspiration behind her Western Prohibition setting for Blind […]
Interview with S.L. McInnis
Interview with S.L. McInnis by Anna Shura S.L. McInnis has a degree in broadcasting and has worked in public radio and television. Like the two main characters in the book, she studied music for years. She lives in Rotterdam with her husband. Framed is her debut thriller. AS: Could you please tell us […]
Punching Up Your Action Thriller By Glen Erik Hamilton, June 2021
Punching Up Your Action Thriller By Glen Erik Hamilton, June 2021 Labeling your novel an “action thriller” may seem limiting, or even redundant. Doesn’t every thriller novel have at least one fight or chase scene these days? And isn’t the action genre more suited to movies, where character development often takes a back seat to spectacle? While […]
The Strange True Stories Behind The Girl in the Mirror
Why do we read novels? We all know they aren’t true, but we allow ourselves to believe, to get caught up as though in a dream. Readers’ willingness to suspend disbelief is perhaps one of the strangest things about fiction. However, there are limits. Some readers will happily swallow stories with fanciful creatures, sci-fi […]
The Writer Inside Me
Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me (1952) established him as one of the preeminent practitioners of hardboiled crime fiction. A first-person confession of a small town deputy sheriff going on a murder spree, it is a frightening and gripping novel that earned Thompson the sobriquet “Dimestore Dostoevsky.” Stanley Kubrick, who directed two Jim […]