Top 10 Rules About the CIA Every Spy Novel Writer Must Know Stories of men and women operating in the shadows from each corner of the world, while the rest of us mere mortals go on about our lives, have captured our imagination and helped build a multi-billion book and movie industry. Year after year, […]

5 Things to Know About Writing as a Business   Commercial publishing is a business.  You can be a wonderful person who is kind to animals and always pays your bills on time, and still not get any traction.  Don’t take it personally. Persevere. There are writers who have great success by following exactly none […]

THE TEN BEST WAYS TO FIND AND DEVELOP STORY IDEAS FOR MYSTERIES   Let me start with a disclaimer. None of these methods are full proof. All I can really say is that they work for me. And in my decades long career as a working, professional writer, I have found out, either by discussions […]

The Art of Collaboration As we prepare for the release of our tenth book together, we realize that, by necessity, we’ve learned a lot about the art of collaboration.  Although we’d each been writing individually for over twenty years before embarking on this new chapter of our careers, nothing quite prepared us for the give-and-take […]

Writing Tips: 5 Tips for Building a Page-Turner   Recently I was a panelist at a conference for writers and readers. The four authors on stage were supposed to share, with a hotel conference room full of fans and aspiring writers, tips for keeping readers turning the pages. How does an author construct a plot […]

Can you manipulate your audience to avoid being branded?   I never felt a thing. No branding iron sat in the campfire at the ranch until it was red-hot, and no screams came from me as my flesh sizzled. But I was branded. And I still am. I came to writing thrillers after many years […]

How to be a Writer: The Steps for Success Step One: Be a reader. Every writer starts out that way. Chances are, we fell in love with books before we even knew what to call them. Our parents and caregivers and teachers read to us, and we were transported. My father read us The Watchbirds […]

10 Questions to Ask Your Characters While Writing Your First Draft Writing a first draft is a little bit like dating. You’re testing the waters with your newly created characters. You’re teasing out bits of their personalities to get a better grasp on what makes them tick and whether you want to spend months or […]

 KARIN SLAUGHTER’S KILLER WRITING TIPS    Find an isolated place: a quiet room, the Georgia Mountains, your closet, wherever. Sequester yourself for weeks at a time. Write until you’re exhausted and hallucinating. Sleep for a few hours. Then do it again.   Ignore your adorable cats. Sit down at your computer to just start writing already! […]

Nine things I’ve learned writing a first draft   1)         Beginning is really hard – It’s always daunting to open up a blank page. It always feels insurmountable to turning nothing into an 85,000-word novel, but just writing 500 words a day makes a first draft in less than six months. I know that the […]

Where do you get your ideas from, Mr. Preston   The most difficult question a writer is asked is this: Where do you get your ideas? It is by and large unanswerable, as the ideas seem to come unbidden and unlooked for out of some dark and mysterious inglenook of the mind. But in the […]