When a crime-fiction conference recently came to San Francisco, a friend of mine issued me a challenge: since Capri Sanzio, the protagonist of my current mystery series, is a true-crime walking tou…

Feature image credit: Nick Wall via Variety Agatha Christie fans, rejoice! Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence series has a new adaptation! This series of Christie’s features two of her lesse…

These authors use fracture and disruption to capture the experience of trauma and enact it in the text itself

Unlock the power of subplots in your writing. Discover how to effectively integrate subplots for deeper storytelling.

  HELP my new book will be a out in a week, and I’ve been posting away on social media lately. I know it doesn’t make the biggest difference, but I also believe that if we’re…

Discover how creative constraints and genre guidelines actually enhance creativity and lead to more innovative writing solutions.

Having online listings and a website is step one — the next is to rank on page one of search results, which is where author SEO comes in.

If you have a very busy brain, like me, you might be sub-par at distinguishing between a great idea and I must do this great idea RIGHT NOW.

How long does it take to sell a novel to a traditional publisher? About that long. But in seriousness, while there aren’t statistics that track average time spent on submission, anecdotally it seems like it’s taking longer than ever. In this post, I’m going to break down how long you can expect it to take, […]

Create a manageable online presence as a new writer, focusing on website fundamentals, selective social media, and sustainable practices.

When it comes to marketing your book on social media, it can be easy to fall into a rut. Here are our tips on how to create social media content as an author.

Antiheroes, Antagonists & Villains, are morally gray characters who make trouble in your story. But what's the difference? Which do you need?

Paulina Borsook saw there was something rotten afoot in Silicon Valley in the 1990s, and in her book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech, she set out…

It’s getting harder and harder to tell the bounds between gothic fiction, suspense, psychological thrillers, and horror; much of what makes a good thriller is a good twist, and for me, a twis…

Deanna Martinez-Bey discusses finding flow in writing and why getting lost in your writing is mentally healing.

The iconic Elizabeth George bemoans the state of grammar! And she's warning you of several death-of-grammar errors that particularly cut her to the quick

I don’t know about you, but I read to escape. To leave the mundane world behind. To dive into a setting completely different from my own. And to me, few things are more escapist than novels set wit…

Author Leah De Forest shares four instances where an attention to POV skills can level up your fiction writing.

The secret sauce to reader investment is character investment. A character who cares provokes a gut-level reaction for readers.

A standout writing voice is a mixture of your natural style and sentence-level decisions that bring who you are to life.

A secret in fiction, as in life, doesn’t have to be a bombshell like the revelation of a State secret, the identity of a ruthless killer, or the true nature of a historical event. It can be a quiet…

Learn to deepen character inner conflict, complicate difficult choices, and use added pressure to force a stubborn character to finally act.

Readers feel emotions because they experience events through a novel's character who wants something, risks losing it, and reacts in a way that feels meaningful to them.

Author Stefanie Koens shares her approach to writing dual-timeline stories that readers love to keep them coming back for more.

With backstory, the trick is to only show what is necessary to supply context. Tie it to the current scene, and to the emotions at play.

One of my favorite things about the writing community is how generous writers are with each other—especially when we have every reason to be guarded. After all, most people only read a book or two …

A practical (and humorous) look at how to channel your inner "Creative Badass." Plus. how to know when your creative well is depleted, and WHY.

Feature image credit: Nick Wall via Variety Agatha Christie fans, rejoice! Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence series has a new adaptation! This series of Christie’s features two of her lesse…

Chewed up gum, unraveled yarn, a flower stripped of its petals. Like so many in my generation, my introduction to sex was in pro-abstinence talks with my church youth group and in my sterile health…

Spanning eight decades, these writers use unconventional forms to explore migration, family, gender, grief, and belonging

Horror is having a moment. From masterful spins on classic gothic tales to daring new explorations of supernatural and psychological horror, readers are chomping at the bit for spooky tales. Perhap…

Susan Watts shares several discoveries that completely changed the way she revises emotional scenes, making the scenes stronger.

My summer began with rushing one of my sons to the emergency room for a very large kidney stone that required an overnight hospital stay, a stent, and a later surgery to dissolve the stone. It was …

These days so many bestselling novels are written in “Close Third POV.” Veteran book editor Brenda Copeland tells you what it is—and how to achieve it.

How do you figure out the theme of your novel? How do you keep it from overwhelming the story? Do you even need a theme at all?

by John Ryan. Learn how to manage working with existing IPs in game narrative writing. What are you allowed to do? What can you expect? And how can you get those gigs?

Ten quick strategies for overcoming procrastination plus ways to discover why you procrastinate that you may not have considered before.

Scams prey on our emotions. Rachel Warmath shares how to spot scammers before they can separate you from your hard earned funds.

When you set your characters in motion, you inspire the reader’s hope that your story will also go somewhere. Orienting us to those characters and their setting with a block of description, t…

Author Melissa Payne discusses the dream of being an empty-nester with all the writing time vs. the reality as a writer.

Successful Fiction Writing = Creating + Organizing + Marketing I blog weekly on one of the above three topics, alternating between them. This week, I’m blogging on Organizing. This will be a very short blog post, but it shows you how to master one small aspect of one of the most powerful skills any writer...  Read More

Here are 78+ new and upcoming novels to fill out the rest of this long, long year. You’ll see quite a bit of horror in here, as Halloween season now seems to start in mid-July (summerween, an…

“Rip van Winkle” begins with a description setting the scene between the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains (“these fairy mountains,” which Irving so loved), then introduces us to the protagon…

JUDITH NAMALA author Serubiri Moses explores stories where African girlhood bears the weight of patriarchy and history

Over the course of the four Erin McCabe books, Robyn Gigl made a name for herself a great writer of legal thrillers. Her new book All We Hide is a departure, and also her best book to date. Lauren …

There is something undoubtedly addictive in reading about a courageous lone character facing overwhelming odds, while surviving in utter isolation. History and mythology are brimming with such exam…

It’s nighttime in the playroom and the toys have gathered for a conference. For modern audiences, this scene likely evokes the imaginative world of Toy Story, the long-running film franchise about …

Revision is a holistic view of your work, not the fine details of editing. Here's some suggestions to keep writing when temptation to revise is too great.

Launching a novel can be incredibly stressful. Or it can be a wonderful time. It all depends on doing a few things well and letting go of the rest.

Fear is more than an emotion—it's one of the biggest influencers of behavior. Here are tips to write realistic in-the-moment fear reactions.