The Writing Life Archives - Page 4 of 9

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

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

09.02.15 Book Signings Are a Whole New World

Written by Phoef Sutton

Book signings are a whole new world for me. I’ve been doing a number of them over the last few months. They ranged from interviews with my friend Lee Goldberg to readings from the books by yours truly. The first signing was for FIFTEEN MINUTES TO LIVE, published by Brash Books, at the Barnes & Noble at The Grove in Hollywood. I did it along with Craig Faustus Buck, author of GO DOWN HARD, another Brash Books publication. The evening was moderated by Mr. Goldberg. There was a pretty sizable turn-out, including many old friends from my TV days. The Grove is one of the ready-made, fake village squares that have popped up all over Southern California. The fact that it actually has a... more

08.11.15 The Mystery of A.W. Mykel and THE WINDCHIME LEGACY

Written by AW Mykel

In 1980, the mysterious A.W. Mykel came out of nowhere with the brilliantly inventive espionage thriller The Windchime Legacy. It became an overnight, international bestseller…astonishing readers with its daringly imaginative plot, larger-than-life characters, and outstanding action…becoming one of the most entertaining and beloved spy novels of the century. Mykel wrote two more bestsellers…The Salamandra Glass and The Luxus Conspiracy...and then disappeared as suddenly as he’d appeared. Until Now. We received this blog post as a handwritten note from Mykel's attorney... The Windchime Legacy was written between the years 1976-1978. There were no personal computers in those... more

07.08.15 What We Don’t Reveal About Ourselves in our Writing

Written by Gar Anthony Haywood

I’ve always been reluctant to write about my own real life experiences. The reasons I give are, a) I don’t think those experiences are all that fascinating; and b) I don’t think they’re anybody’s business but my own. That’s a rather selfish attitude, I admit, but then, I’ve never been a subscriber to the idea that nothing great ever comes of art that doesn’t require one to open up a vein. This isn’t to say I don’t believe a writer’s best work has to involve some measure of self-reflection. I do. I just don’t think a reader needs to know the intimate details of a writer’s life in order to fully connect with his work. If a writer’s done his job right,... more

07.06.15 Keep the Jetsam…You Could be Tossing an Award

Written by Craig Faustus Buck

On the morning that my novel Go Down Hard was published, I expected the day to be filled with social media tasks. Early reviews had been positive (the American Library Association's Booklist said, "It's a crime novel dream."), friends had been supportive, and my publisher Brash Books had been enthusiastic and generous with marketing initiatives (a rare trait in a publisher these days). But my plans were quickly, and pleasantly, derailed by the news that I had been nominated for an Anthony Award for a short story called Honeymoon Sweet. For the uninitiated, the Anthony is given out every year at Bouchercon, the world's largest crime writing convention, which takes place this year in... more

06.09.15 The Writing of BLIND SPOT…and the peculiar life and death of Adam Barrow

Written by Tom Kakonis

Author Tom Kakonis tells the unusual story behind his haunting thriller BLIND SPOT, and why he originally published it, and his novel FLAWLESS, under the doomed pseudonym "Adam Barrow." In the late afternoon of a fine summer day many years ago, my wife and I were driving down one of those Interstates that ring the city of Chicago like a hangman’s noose. She, a suburban native of that city, was behind the wheel, I rode shotgun. Since it was nearing rush hour, that perpetually traffic-clogged highway was swarming with vehicles plunging headlong toward only god knew where. But as we approached a toll station, all of us began first to gradually decelerate, then slow to a crawl, then stop... more

Posts Categorized: The Writing Life