The Verdict is In! The Winners of The Strand Critics Awards By Strand Staff   The Awards Go to… On Wednesday, July 9, at an invitation-only cocktail party in Manhattan, Lauren Beukes won the Strand Critics Award for Best Novel for The Shining Girls (Mulholland Books). Roger Hobbs won the Best First Novel award for Ghostman (Knopf). […]

Fatal Puzzles I’ve been reading detective novels for many more years than I’ve been writing them. In fact, if I hadn’t been reading them—and loving them—I’m sure I’d never have had the motivation to write one. But there was more to that motivation than the pleasure  those novels provided. It was the realization that they […]

The Art of Creative Listening Inspiration for a new novel can come from the most unusual, and often mundane, places. The art of spotting it is simply a matter of listening with a creative ear.As a member in good standing of the Working Class Writers League (i.e., every writer who needs a day job to […]