PRESENT TENSE

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Book report: lessons from judging a lit award
Covers, publishers, and getting down to DNF
 • 
Caitlin Wahrer
6
Reverse outlining lessons from an Edgar winner
PLEASE SEE US author Caitlin Mullen shares one of her essential craft tools for developing and revising suspense fiction
4
Hamptons Whodunit: A new East Coast mystery and crime conference
Guest blogger Shana Wilson brings us a report from the April conference's star-packed premiere, including thoughts on reveals vs. twists, character vs…
3
Agatha Christie, Life Lesson #3. “I embarked lightheartedly”: Be Open to Challenges
What’s the last thing you did simply because someone dared you to do it? (Not stick your tongue to a frozen pole. We’re talking about interesting…
 • 
Andromeda Romano-Lax
2
April 2023
Notes on the Execution of Good Character
Wants, needs, and Danya Kukafka
 • 
Caitlin Wahrer
7
Missing Girls, Monsters, and the Emotional Stakes of Genre
Good as Gone author Amy Gentry digs into some common plot tropes to help us understand the real anxieties and questions pulsing below the surface
2
What Your Characters Don’t Know...Could Kill Them
Using Dramatic Irony to Build Tension in a Novel
 • 
Caitlin Wahrer
 and 
Jen Waite
7
Agatha Christie, Lesson #2: "The importance of books, re-reading, solitude and time"
The Victorians hot-housed flowers, but they didn't necessarily hothouse their children. What we can learn from Agatha's low-key, unschooled childhood.
 • 
Andromeda Romano-Lax
4
March 2023
How to Gone a Girl in 3 Steps
Using the three-act story structure to maximize suspense
 • 
Caitlin Wahrer
7
The One with Some Thoughts on Voice (re: I Have Some Questions for You)
In which we have no questions for Rebecca Makkai but will gladly compile thoughts from interviews she has given elsewhere, in order to discuss a tricky…
 • 
Andromeda Romano-Lax
6
Traveling alone for "sacred and unfettered access to reading"
An interview with By Herself Travel on reading mindset and lifestyle
 • 
Caitlin Wahrer
3
Agatha Christie, Life Lesson #1: “Very few of us are what we seem.”
The joy in discovering that the author you wrote off as irrelevant may be just the woman to teach us how to bounce back, be wildly productive, deal with…
 • 
Andromeda Romano-Lax
5
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