On behalf of my fellow suspense authors, I want to thank everyone who entered our first contest and once again congratulate Amanda Lawrence for her win! (Yeah! Cheers! Applause!) We’ll be announcing our next contest in January, so stay tuned. In case you didn’t follow the contest, the rules were simple. Email us your answer to this question: Who’s the scariest villain and why? I loved Amanda’s answer: The one in the current murder mystery I am reading. . . . Because at the time, ‘they’ are the one making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up… Read More

Tess Gerritsen is one of my all-time favorite writers. I “discovered” her with THE SURGEON, then read her single-title backlist. GRAVITY has to be one of the best books written in the last twenty years. Anyway, she blogged the other day about a subject I’ve been thinking alot about lately . . . whether men read suspense novels written by women. I’ll pontificate on this subject down the road, because I’m still mulling things over in my mind (which can be a crowded place at times!) One thing she said really hit home: How many of us women readers are… Read More

When I first started seriously writing, I gave up most television. I still watched CSI, but that was my “one exception.” If I didn’t give up tv, I’d never have written a book. Or seven. But I love television. So as a treat to myself when I complete a major task, I purchase a complete season of a show I’d missed because of writing. After The Hunt, I bought the first season of Deadwood. It’s rough and crude, much like the real Deadwood, South Dakota during the gold rush. But I was hooked. Why? Because of the characters. The writers… Read More

My books came yesterday! Read about it over at the 2BRead blog . . .

Here’s some blogs you might have missed . . . Today, at Romancing the Blog, I wrote about Chemistry. Head on over and tell me who your favorite fictional couple is and why . . . Colleen Thompson, who writes romantic suspense for Leisure, has a great column about why she writes RS. It’s something we’ve discussed here at MSW. I particularly love this: . . . a world where, without exception, the mystery is solved, the mortal threat vanquished, the evil punished, and flawed yet worthy human beings find the love that they deserve. For some holiday whimsy, check… Read More

Miss Snark unsnarky . . . Yesterday, Miss Snark (my guilty pleasure) posted this sad story, beginning: A good guy was gunned down in the streets of Brooklyn two nights ago. He was a cop doing his job, chasing a guy who turned out to be armed, dangerous, and really stupid. The stupid guy lived. Officer Stewart, father of two, husband, brother, son, didn’t. Read more about this senseless tragedy here and here and here. Which leads me to why I write suspense. It’s exactly what Miss Snark says . . . “Crime novels make sense of the carnage. There’s… Read More

One of my favorite movies is the musical 1776. Ken Howard played Thomas Jefferson, Howard DaSilva played Benjamin Franklin, and William Daniels (the voice of KITT in the old eighties show Knight Rider) played John Adams. If you’ve never seen it, you should. My hubby and I went to see it on stage in Sacramento and had fourth row center seats. The stage production was fantastic, too, but I never tire of seeing the video. 1776 recounts the events leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I’ll admit that I love John Adams, who was “obnoxious and… Read More

Natalie, Karin and I met for a weekend of brainstorming and wine. Practically at gunpoint, Karin MADE me plot out my option book. It was a story I’d been thinking about for awhile. Black market pharmaceuticals, mass murder, and a truly narcisstic villain with a God complex. I really didn’t know the hero, but I had a good grasp of the heroine’s backstory, why she did what she did, what haunted her, etc. Everything was pretty vague except for the opening scene, which took place in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains, north of Lake Tahoe, and basically was… Read More

Shhh, I have a secret. If you’re taking the on-line class I’m teaching about the hero’s journey for the AskAnAuthorAll loop for Romance Writers of America members, you can get ahead of the game. I’ve been watching my favorite romances all week, and one that I’ll be using extensively is FRENCH KISS with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline. I LOVE that movie. Other’s I’ll use as examples are WORKING GIRL with Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford and WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING with Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman. These aren’t the only movies, but if you watch one of the three… Read More

I have an admittedly macabre fascination with what turns people to the dark side. Perhaps that’s why Star Wars always held such a strong allure for me. The original premise of The Kill was that of a wrongfully convicted man released because of DNA evidence more than thirty years later seeks revenge on those who put him in prison. I say original because the book took on a life of its own and really became more about the real killer and how he managed to ellude police for so long. Shawshank Redemption is one of my all-time favorite movies, and… Read More