Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 70

Staring Down the Barrel of 2023, by Josh Stallings

Do you have any New Year's resolutions as a writer, and what are your plans for 2023?

In the last three or four years it has felt like surviving with my mind and body intact was enough to ask for, anything else was a bonus. Staring down the barrel of 2023 I am ready to raise the bar. Writing wise, I aim to finish my new novel…

Okay, I wrote that last night, trying for positivity. Today truth is taking over. Writing is for me a wonderful avocation but with the down turn in the world economy and the...

Keep on keepin' on, by Catriona

Q: Do you have any New Year's resolutions as a writer, and what are your plans for 2023?

I'm a sucker for New Year's resolutions. I make them every year and don't usually keep more than half of one of them. But that's okay. It gives me a boost in the receipt-logging, vegetable-eating, exhibition-attending, rose-pruning stakes.

(It helps that I stick to the 12 days of Christmas and none of this starts until Jan 6th. The tree comes down, the shortbread tin goes away and the alarm is set for you're k...

Try, try...and try again by Cathy Ace

Do you have any New Year's resolutions as a writer, and what are your plans for 2023?

Write better

Write smarter

Write faster

Don't beat myself up if I don’t achieve all my resolutions (this is an annual resolution I ALWAYS fail at, whatever the others might be!)

Will I be able to stick to the first three? Hmm…only time will tell.

Write better?This is what I always strive for. I hope I’m writing “better” now than when I began, in the same way we all hope our craft improves as we practice it. But i...

Writerly Resolutions, and this Mind’s plans for 2023 by Gabriel Valjan

 

I’ve always looked at New Year’s as a second birthday. With our first birthday, we acknowledge the day we first appeared on this blue marble. It’s personal to us, our unique day. We receive energy. New Year’s is different. We set intention and we direct our energy. A resolution is a commitment we impose on ourselves. It signals Change and whatever IT is, IT implies a journey. IT will take time.

I’ll write IT down in my pocket calendar ahead of time and check-mark it when it’s...

Q: Do you have any New Year's resolutions as a writer, a...

 Q: Do you have any New Year's resolutions as a writer, and what are your plans for 2023?

-from Susan

Well, let's start by saying post on time to Criminal Minds. Sorry, everyone.

I never make New Year's resolutions for all the reasons that are discussed endlessly in op-ed pieces. They always seem to be destined to fail, frequently before the end of January. You know: Lose 10 pounds, eat no sugar, write 2000 words a day every day, don't look at Facebook....

As a writer, my best and most powerful reso...

Season's Greetings!

 

You can sod off, 2022, but leave the books please

 Abir Mukherjee

 

So here we are, staggering weak-limbed and dry-mouthed towards the finish line of another ridiculous year: 2022 – another corker of calamity – with those horsemen of the apocalypse, war, pestilence and err inflation stalking us like the last single guys at a party.

 

On the bright side, we’ve managed to avoid nuclear Armageddon for now, which is a positive for our species but possibly a negative for the planet in the long run. 2022 also feels like the year we finally turned the cor...

Some Really Good Books I Read in 2022 From James W. Ziskin

I’m not crazy about the Best Books of the Year lists. To be clear, I don’t object to the great books on those lists. They deserve accolades. I only wish the reviewers could use a better description for their annual lists. Kristopher Zgorski of BOLO Books does exactly that. He’s always careful to note that he’s not proclaiming his choices as “the best books of the year.” He calls them instead his “Top Reads” of the year.

For the past few years, I’ve been listing the books I particularly enjoyed ov...

Yule love these

This week we’ve been asked for our favorite reads from the past year.

by Dietrich

Here’s my list. They’re not all new releases, and not all fiction, but they’re all highly recommended. 

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy; Knopf, 2022. It’s his first since The Road — and wow, what a book. It takes one twist after another while centering around a salvage diver who’s being chased by feds; all the while he’s haunted by thoughts of the schizophrenic sister who killed herself.

Fairy Tale by Stephen King; Sc...

A Few Good Titles

 

I admit that I don’t like writing end-of-year recommendations. Why? Because I read so many good books during the year, and it’s hard to list only the best of the best when there are some second-tier ones that had some special moments,. And it’s so subjective. More than once I’ve been excited to read a book that “everyone” is gaga over, only to find that it just doesn’t work for me. And also the opposite—books I’ve read that I never heard of, that seem should be at the top of best-seller lists. ...