Take a feisty female heroine, add a mysterious book that releases deadly creatures into the world, throw in an old boyfriend, a handsome sheriff, and a devilishly sexy demon. Shake it all up, and a paranormal romance series—Booke of the Hidden—is born. I had a freelance editor tell me to “lose the romance between the … Read more
To me, what’s fun about writing a paranormal, is all the creatures you get to explore and play with. My Booke of the Hidden series is paranormal, with a little romance, and a little mystery. In a nutshell; tea proprietor Kylie Strange must capture deadly creatures she’s unwittingly unleashed, while juggling the advances of an alluring and dangerous … Read more
I had seen others do it. You take a doll house, old, used usually or even a Playskool playhouse, and repurpose them as a Halloween Haunted House, painting and staging them to look distinctly different from their overly cheerful origins. And this year, I had the need to do my own. First, there was trying … Read more
There are hazards to writing a period piece. There’s a lot of research involved, from the cut of a shoe to the taste of the food. So when I set out to pen my medieval mystery series and later my Tudor series, there were many tidbits of information I sought to keep it real. For … Read more
No, this isn’t the beginning of a new cozy series. And no, I’m not a detective in real life. Just a writer of mysteries. Medieval, Tudor, and Sherlockian mysteries, if you want to get technical. A reptile who solves crimes works on cold cases. Heh. Harley is a twenty-seven-year-old Mojave Desert Tortoise. We got her … Read more
Why is it that screenwriters and producers feel that a movie “based on actual incidents” or calling itself “historical” is allowed to play fast and loose with the facts? I can tell you straight out that any book that purports to be based on “actual events” or any other historical novel for that matter, can’t … Read more
I was listening to mystery author Laura Lippman on the radio a long while back and she said something that was rather an epiphany for me. She writes bestselling crime novels and I guess I would consider them the “literary” kind in the same sense that a “literary novel” is one that appeals to a … Read more
England. The mere name conjures up images of castles, long rolling plains of green, ancient stone structures, knights, kings, pageantry of a different age, stone walls and thatched cottages. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tolkien. Magical in every sense of the word. And growing up in a household of rabid Anglophiles certainly set me on an inevitable course … Read more
I remember being on a panel in one of my first Bouchercons with authors Sharon Newman and Laurie King, and since we all wrote historical mysteries, the discussion naturally rolled over to “authenticity vs accuracy.” When you write historically, history is king. You never change the history to serve the plot, it’s always the other … Read more
“Hey buddy. C’mere. Wanna buy a mystery?” Yes, it feels a little like that when, as an author, I’m set up with a little table in a bookstore with piles of my books. Sometimes I’m in the front of the store (better), but sometimes in the back (deadly). These kinds of gigs are murder whether … Read more