PRESENT TENSE

One of my most enjoyable and surprising recent reads was Ramona Emerson’s Shutter (Soho Press), a book that falls into the mystery/suspense category, with an added element of paranormal horror. Granted, the mystery aspects of Shutter’s plot make it a compelling and more commercial read. But even had those parts been excised, I still would have been draw…

At a recent reading I gave someone asked me just how I came to write crime fiction. I told her the truth: mostly by accident. I often say to my students that if you had told me in my late 20s, when I was starting graduate school, that I was going to be known as a crime writer, it would have been like telling present-day me that in another five years I wil…

Last month I wrote about why I think story structure is so important when you’re writing suspense. When I’ve worked with young writers, I’ve taught the three-act story structure early on. It’s my favorite to work with, it’s easy to understand, and like many a thriller, it comes with a midpoint twist.

This is the second in a monthly series. The first installment is here. If you’d met Agatha Christie as a child, you wouldn’t have guessed you were meeting a bestselling author in the making. We can’t reshape our early years, but we can hope to cultivate some of the habits and advantages Agatha had: a love of reading, a special love of