Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 195

Feeding Creativity

At 7 Criminal Minds this week we are picking our own subject. I’m writing about feeding creativity.
A few years ago I was working on a book and got totally stumped. I couldn’t move forward, but I couldn’t give it up, either. Finally, I realized that I had holed up and worked on the book to the exclusion of other activities. My creative brain had gone stale. I knew it was time to get out and about and feed my creative side. In this particular case, I went for a long walk. But not just any walk...

The Story Behind the Story -- Guest Post by Laura Brennan

Every week we answer a set question. This week you have the opportunity to write about whatever you want to write about as long as it has something to do with the intent of our blog.

by Paul D Marks

Since today’s post is an open question, I thought I’d have Laura Brennan pinch hit for me. Laura’s eclectic career includes television, film, theater, fiction, and news. Her weekly podcast, Destination Mystery, features interviews with mystery writers of every subgenre. Her short story, “Drivin...

Ae Fond Blog

Well, this is fortunate. It's free-for-all week at Criminal Minds and so I get to write whatever I want on the 25th of January of all days. It's an important one in the Scottish calendar, being the (258th) anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. 
Who? Robert Burns. Odds are if you asked a hundred Scots "Who's the greatest Scot who ever lived?" you'd get the answer "Rabbie" from most of them. (Even people who don't think they know who he is, do kind of know who he is because he wrote "Au...

Blog posts as confessionals...by Cathy Ace

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A Slight Case of Writer's Block - RM Greenaway

Given free rein, today I will talk about grave stuff, like resolutions, failure, consequences, contracts, and other flimflam.

I'm thinking about all this because of I seem to have run into a wall of ennui, and whenever that bright bulb of inspiration begins to flicker and dim I get a little anxious, since writing is no longer a minor dalliance in my life. It's a major dalliance, and the signed contract somewhere in my office says so: hammer out the next one -- by deadline -- or else.

Or else wh...

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-from Susan
I couldn’t resist answering the same question as last week’s: Dinner party for eight, seven of them characters from crime fiction, me the eighth? 
I love planning dinner parties, hoping to spark good conversation among people who may not think alike, but who think, and can talk, and are fun. Usually, there’s some constraint on the ideal guest list: someone will be out of town; person A has a boring partner who can kill conversations with a single syllab...

Elliot's Leap Day Birthday Party

You are having a dinner party for eight, including yourself, in a memorable setting. Where is this setting and which seven characters in crime fiction would you invite and why? (Caveat: I added one, for numerological balance.)

For my first topic of 2018, I'll keep in the realm in which I'm currently working. If it's a dinner party for eight, I'd make it the birthday party for the protagonist of my mystery series, Elliot Caprice. It couldn't be a party including me as that would subject me to o...

We Met at Nine. We Met at Eight.

You are having a dinner party for eight, including yourself, in a memorable setting. Where is this setting and which seven characters in crime fiction would you invite and why?

We Met at Nine. We Met at Eight.


As one of my guests refuses to budge from his home (and no one else is able to move him either), we meet in an elegant West 35th Street brownstone in midtown Manhattan. And if we’re dining chez Nero Wolfe, we have to invite Archie Goodwin, too, even if he’ll probably ask for a corned...

A hell of a party

You are having a dinner party for eight, including yourself, in a memorable setting. Where is this setting and which seven characters in crime fiction would you invite and why?
by Dietrich Kalteis
This question makes me feel like I’m about to sit down at a dinner table of strangers in an Agatha Christie novel, just as the lights are about to go out. It also reminds me of the board game Clue. 
So, I’m thinking along the lines of an Agatha Christie mystery, but instead of setting the party in...

A Killer of a Dinner Party

By R.J.Harlick

You are having a dinner party for eight, including yourself, in a memorable setting. Where is this setting and which seven characters in crime fiction would you invite and why?
Meg Harris wasn’t the least happy when I proposed that she and her husband, Eric Odjik, host the dinner party for some of her fellow crime fiction characters.
“Three Deer Point is the perfect place to hold it,” I continued. “Your guests will love your Victorian cottage with its enormous pine timbers and fi...