The Inside Story Archives - Page 2 of 6

08.29.16 Max Allan Collins: The Long Road to Perdition

ROAD TO PERDITION is coming back in November and is now available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo and Google Play. It’s something of a dream come true for me to finally have my original version out there in the world. In 2002 I wrote a 70,000-word movie tie-in novel (okay, novelization) of the script for the movie that was based on my graphic novel. In my novel, I attempted to be true to the screenplay while weaving in material from the graphic novel as well as historical material about the real John Looney and his era. The DreamWorks licensing department put me through hell, making me cut anything – including dialogue! – that wasn’t directly... more

05.26.16 Writing Storme: Neon, Tough Guys, and the New Nashville

Written by W.L. Ripley

W.L Ripley is the author of the four acclaimed Wyatt Storme novels, which have won enthusiastic comparison by readers, critics, and fellow crime writers to the best of Robert B. Parker and John D. MacDonald. Today he talks about how his third Storme novel, Eye of The Storme, arose from his fascination with Branson, Missouri. In 1970, Branson, Missouri was a smattering of bait shops and convenience stores, population 2,550. A few years earlier, Silver Dollar City, an 1880’s theme park much like California’s Knott’s Berry Farm was added to augment the tourist attractions of boating, fishing and the outdoor theatre production of “Shepard of the Hills”. Today Branson is "the New... more

05.23.16 GRAVEN IMAGES: Finding Garner Quinn’s Voice

Written by Jane Waterhouse

Jane Waterhouse's writing has been described by Booklist "as lyrical as a lullaby and as eerily hypnotic as a cobra’s dance" and those talents are very much on display in her blockbuster thriller GRAVEN IMAGES. Here she tells us how she created the heroine, Garner Quinn, and developed the story. GRAVEN IMAGES was originally written in the third person. Reading through my first draft of the manuscript it hit me like a ton of bricks—Oh crap. This is a first-person story. But it had taken me months to get to this point and I wasn’t ready to give up control to some imagined character just yet. So I struck a bargain with my protagonist, Garner Quinn. I said I’d go back to page one... more

03.08.16 Success as a Writer Means Gathering Hyphens

Written by Jim Sanderson

Jim Sanderson is the author of El Camino Del Rio, an amazing crime novel that has won enormous, well-deserved praise from readers, critics and authors alike. But it took a while for Jim to achieve that success... time he spent, as he puts it, gathering hyphens and adjectives. And he learned that sustaining that 'hyphenated' success is even harder. Here's his story... For years I was an “unknown writer” before I became an “unknown Texas writer.” Then, I had a very good year and had two books come out. An essay collection made me a “little-known Texas writer,” and a novel made me a “Texas mystery writer.” To succeed financially or critically, a writer needs a niche, a... more

02.28.16 Jim Sanderson: How I Wrote “El Camino Del Rio”

Written by Jim Sanderson

From a retrospect, we find that we might have been lucky enough to have lived in certain times and places that turn out to matter. I have two. In the ‘70s I was trying to be a college student in San Marcos, just underneath Austin, when Willie and Waylon invaded and made the area the redneck hippie capitol of the world. I watched, listened, smelled, and felt. I went native. Eventually, I wrote several stories and a novel about that time and place. For most of the next decade, I found myself watching, listening, smelling, and feeling an oil boom then bust in Odessa, Texas. A Texas and western history buff, I was living in a wild-west mining town: Deadwood, Denver, Helena, Virginia... more

02.26.16 Margaret Moseley: How I Wrote “BONITA FAYE”

Written by Margaret Moseley

Bonita Faye is one of the most unusual, charming, creative, and funny books we've ever ready. It defies categorization. We like to say if Elmore Leonard ever wrote a cozy, it would be Bonita Faye. It's no surprise that this book was an Edgar Award Finalist. We've asked author Margaret Moseley how she came up with this unusual story. Warning...there's a very small spoiler here, so you may want to read this blog after you've read the first chapter or two of her wonderful book. Sometime in the 80's I found myself working as a business communicator for one of the nation's largest long-term care companies, in other words, nursing homes. I was an advocate (buzz word was Ombudsman) for both... more

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