Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 197

Ho Ho Ho and a Bit of Humbug

Happy Holidays....I think.
Terry Shames here, writing about what I love about the holidays and what drives me crazy. Short answer: everything does both.
I heard an interesting factoid a few days ago. Before Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, only the “lower classes” celebrated Christmas--with gifts and good cheer. The “upper classes” pretty much ignored it. I’d love to know more about that subject, but it seems to be the perfect metaphor for the oddities of the holidays. “Class” aside, some peopl...

Elaine Ash, Editor & More, On Publishing

by Paul D. Marks

Since this will be my last post before the holidays, I want to wish everyone a terrific Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!

Today I’d like to welcome Elaine Ash, editor, writer and friend. Elaine was born and grew up in eastern Canada, but calls L.A. home these days. Under the pen name “Anonymous-9,” her crime fiction is included in numerous “Best of” lists every year. It’s won consecutive Readers’ Choice Awards from the House of Crime and Mystery, as well as Best Short Story...

"It's a compliment, really!"

"If you were in charge, what one change would you make to the world of publishing?"

by Catriona

Easy! I'd make the penalties so horrendous that people were too scared to . . . or just tweak people's brains so they didn't want to . . . or maybe do something technologically so far beyond me that I can't even imagine it that meant no one was able to . . . have you guessed yet? . . . pirate e-books.

It's weird, but even people who're not Zen Buddhists most of the time, people who believe in possessi...

Changing (or using?) the business...by Cathy Ace

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Free-Range Writers - by RM Greenaway

If you were in charge, what one big change would you make to the business of publishing?
It's difficult to answer, because to me it feels as if the business of publishing is already going through changes, a kind of mutating freefall in fact. eBooks have made borders obsolete, Goodreads reviews can make or break you, every writer needs social-media-platform shoes, the crowded market, bewildering technology, endless new options, robots writing pretty darn good stories, book-selling websites dict...

Memo from the corner office

Q: If you were in charge, what one big change would you make to the business of publishing?

- from Susan

I'd go backward in time, to the era when publishers felt it was their job to encourage, nourish, and support promising writers. Instead of pouring all their support into the few proven successes who bring in the most bucks, publishers would be delighted to help authors who wrote well, worked hard, had fresh ideas, and ambition to write The Best Damn Book of the Year.

No more using the star po...

Success Only Makes It Harder

If you knew anything you wrote would be published and successful, what would you write?

This is a good question for me to make up for my absence on the Friday after American Thanksgiving. My post was halfway composed before I had to avert a crisis-level garbage disposal malfuction. I dusted off advanced-level plumbing skills I developed long ago, and for no apparent reason in the moment. I certainly didn't expect to learn to plumb. I hadn't endeavored to be a plumber. I didn't foresee a need t...

The Midas Touch

“If you knew that anything you wrote would be published and successful, what would you write?”

From Jim

My last book. I would quit writing.

There would be no challenge. No wondering or hoping or wanting. There would be no dream. I can’t imagine a more dreary life. Who wants to end up like Midas?















Bear in mind that a superstar hitter in baseball only succeeds about thirty percent of the time. How boring if batting became a conga line.


And since we’re on sports now, if I knew that every shot I took o...

Overnight $uccess

If you knew anything you wrote would be published and successful, what would you write?
By Dietrich Kalteis
Doing what you love is anybody’s best shot at success. And I love sitting at my desk and making stuff up. And I don’t think any of us can predict what’s going to be a best-seller. I know if I tried to write what I guessed would sell, rather than writing what I loved to write about, it would be crap.
Okay, it sounds corny, but it’s the best thing in the world to get to do what I love every...

What is Success?

By R.J. Harlick
If you knew that anything you wrote would be published and successful, what would you write?
It depends on what defines success, because money isn’t everything.
I have had many markers defining success along my journey as a writer. The first measure was to complete the writing of a full-length novel.  I tell you there was much hooting and jumping up and down when I finally wrote THE END on the first draft of my first attempt. I had actually written a book, all hundred thousa...