Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 73

Pilgrim, I'm Not

 

From Terry: Here’s our weekly question: From Hemingway’s home in Key West to the train platform at King’s Cross Station, readers love to visit the haunts of their favorite writers and the key scenes from their favorite books. What literary pilgrimage have you made (or would like to make)? 
 I have been to Hemingway’s home in Key West—although I was never a Hemingway fan. I just happened to be in Key West and thought, why not? There were lots of cats. That’s what I liked best. 
 I’ve always tho...

On Location

From Hemingway’s home in Key West to the train platform at King’s Cross Station, readers love to visit the haunts of their favorite writers and the key scenes from their favorite books. What literary pilgrimage have you made (or would like to make)?

Brenda here.

Great question this week! 

My husband Ted and I made a trip to France at the end of April this year and stayed for most of the month of May. In planning the trip, I happened upon the site describing the bar where Hemmingway famously drank i...

STRUCTURAL NIGHTMARE: the dense plot from the denser mind of a writer on his latest novel By Eric Beetner

Why did I do it to myself?

I am an outliner, but this isn’t about the eternal battle lines between plotters and pantsers. For my latest novel, There and Back, the 36th novel I’ve completed (some co-written, some very short, some under pen names, some so bad they’ll never see the light of day) I came up with a story that I liked quite a lot and I wanted to follow it where it led.

The trouble became that it led to those two words all writers should dread: dual timelines.

In the novel a group of young...

Without the aid of a finishing school, by Catriona

Have you met your literary hero at a conference, or other event? Or have you maintained your author crush from afar?

My meeting with my literary hero was a calamity of uncool that I can laugh about now, years later.

I had always known of Mary Higgins Clark, of course - I worked in a public library and she was one of those prolific authors you navigate by when shelving - but it was when Harlan Coben said he learned plotting from reading her books that I started devouring her considerable oeuvre. 

I ...

M is for Memories... by Cathy Ace

Have you met your literary hero/Author at a conference, or at an event? What was that experience like, or have you maintained your Author crush from afar?

When I began this crazy writing life, I decided to throw myself into the business and attended as many conventions as I could. This means I have met many writers whose work I had admired for years, and have also met many writers whose work I had never encountered until after I’d met them, but – when I read what they wrote – I adored their writ...

A Literary Crush by Gabriel Valjan

Have you met your literary hero/Author at a conference, or at an event? What was that experience like, or have you maintained your Author crush from afar?

 

 

The month is July and the year, 2004. The place is the now extinct Borders in downtown Boston. Little Scarlet, the ninth Easy Rawlins novel, is out. I was nobody, and less than a foot away from me stood Walter Mosley, waiting while the staff set up the table for him to sign books. He seemed tired, perhaps preoccupied, possibly nervous, but...

The Power of Storytellers

Q:  Have you met your literary hero/Author at a conference, or at an event? What was that experience like, or have you maintained your Author crush from afar? 

 

It's my pleasure to introduce my guest blogger today, debut crime fiction author DM Rowell. Donna,  like her protagonist, Mud, comes from a long line of Kiowa storytellers. After a thirty-two-year career spinning stories for Silicon Valley start-ups and corporations, with a few escapes creating award-winning independent documentaries, Rowe...

The March of Progress!

In Murder, She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher pecked out mysteries on an old Royal typewriter in 1984 and ended up tapping them out on her laptop by 1996. What changes in technology had the greatest impact on you in your writing career?

by Abir

 

Right, here’s the problem.

 

I came to writing late. I wasn’t even writing a decade ago, I was too busy being an accountant. That means that I missed the era of typewriters and carbon paper and photocopiers and correction fluid that my fellow bloggers were forced t...

The Sharpest Tools from James W. Ziskin

In Murder, She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher pecked out mysteries on an old Royal typewriter in 1984 and ended up tapping them out on her laptop by 1996. What changes in technology had the greatest impact on you in your writing career?

Without a doubt, the first major change was the advent of personal computers. I seriously doubt I ever could have become a writer without them. I make too many edits and am a lousy typist. Without a computer, I’d never have finished a book-length manuscript. 

Like my Crim...

Analog man in a digital world

In Murder, She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher pecked out mysteries on an old Royal typewriter in 1984 and ended up tapping them out on her laptop by 1996. What changes in technology had the greatest impact on you in your writing career?

by Dietrich

Covid shut down many live events for a couple of years, so it’s a good thing online avenues for promotion were available: Zoom, YouTube, SoundCloud, author’s websites, social media, email services, and so on. Technology that wasn’t around not so long ago.

On-de...