Corpse Pose, the first book in my new Mantra for Murder series, is officially out tomorrow — although frequent poster (and fellow Berkely author) Jenny…Good Lord, Jenny what’s the rest of your pen name?…tells me it’s already popped up on the shelves of various Barnes and Nobles. And I see it’s got an Amazon sales […]

By Kristy Kiernan
Over the past year or so, many fine storytellers have passed away, including, but obviously not limited to: Janet Kagan, Julian Rathbone, Stephen Marlowe, Robin Moore, Edward D. Hoch, Norman Mailer, Carol Bly, Dan Fogelberg, Kurt Vonnegut, Sidney Sheldon, Dawn Thompson, Phyllis Whitney, Bob Smith.
You might not have heard of that last one.
Bob […]

We all know how to structure a story, right? Take a character, plop them down on the bottom of a steep incline and, (aargh!) as they climb, throw obstacle after obstacle at them, one after another, until they (finally - whew!) reach the summit (ta-da!), and fall into a lovely (no loose ends) denouement.
Unless, […]

Oops, it happened again. Yet another author of a “memoir” has been exposed as a teller of fiction rather than fact.
Since these instances keep popping up, I’ve begun to think that the publishing industry may not care if the memoirs are, in fact, lies as long as the disclosure of the fakery draws plenty […]

We all have them. At least I think we do.
Though, now that I’m saying this on the internet, I have to hope we all do. Otherwise I’m more of a nut than I realized.
*Deep breath*
I hear voices. Or, rather, I hear characters in my head—people conversing with one another or simply yacking at me. I’ve […]

So I was prowling the ‘Net today looking for ideas to blog on — because without fail the good blog ideas always come to me when I am nowhere near my laptop — and I came across this blog with the title CRIME WRITING: TEN CLICHES TO AVOID.
Not that — in theory — I have […]

WHAT a week it has been. You cannot even begin to imagine. Some good, lots bad, but I’ve been getting a lot of writing done. I do have to sigh a bit, though, when I consider that this time last week I was in Ft. Lauderdale at the Broward County Literary Feast, an event to […]

I’m about to write the check for the rental of a house we’ll be sharing in August at Lake Champlain. August can’t come soon enough, let me tell you.
When I was hashing over what we’ll do during that precious week, aside from going to the Ben and Jerry’s factory and taking a day […]

The other day, I was thinking about how I view things a bit differently now than I did, say, ten or fifteen years ago.
One thing I’ve learned is that nothing is ever written in stone. I’m a rules girl—a by-the-book kind of gal. I am a Good Girl, after all. Generally, I drive the […]

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks with my hands in a few too many pies. But it’s how I operate for some strange reason so I go with it.
I mean, really, why fix a wheel that’s not broken?
I tend to be fairly focused though, dealing with one pie at a time as […]