Sitemap - 2023 - PRESENT TENSE: Suspense Fiction and More
Why Do Writers Make the Best Spies?
Book Report: Caitlin’s 2023 reading roundup
Angie Kim on Happiness, Venn Diagrams (!), and Defying Genre Expectations
Crime fiction inspired by real life
Help us interview Angie Kim, author of Happiness Falls!
The most famous, bad-ass American mystery writer you never heard of...
The Scary Difficulties of Writing Scary
You're in the right place for suspense fiction reading recs, writerly discussions, and more!
The author-reader contract in suspense
Louisa May Alcott's dark side, Conan Doyle's thirst for justice...
Setting and symbolism in The Witch Elm
Let's Talk History of Crime Fiction
Tension lessons from a great book and a middling movie
A Fraud’s Guide to An Elusive Genre
How Limitations Spark Creativity
Narrative distance part 2: WHERE THE CRYPTIDS FLED
Life lessons from Agatha #5. Agatha Christie's working notebooks are a mess—aren’t you glad?
Taking things one idea at a time
Queerness and spice: Andrea Bartz talks about The Spare Room...
Doing it: early and often, or better to hold out?
Narrative distance part 1: I LET YOU GO
Mystery versus suspense: What HBO’s White Lotus can teach us about how genres work...
Book report: lessons from judging a lit award
Reverse outlining lessons from an Edgar winner
Hamptons Whodunit: A new East Coast mystery and crime conference
Agatha Christie, Life Lesson #3. “I embarked lightheartedly”: Be Open to Challenges
Notes on the Execution of Good Character
Missing Girls, Monsters, and the Emotional Stakes of Genre
What Your Characters Don’t Know...Could Kill Them
Agatha Christie, Lesson #2: "The importance of books, re-reading, solitude and time"
The One with Some Thoughts on Voice (re: I Have Some Questions for You)
Traveling alone for "sacred and unfettered access to reading"
Agatha Christie, Life Lesson #1: “Very few of us are what we seem.”
Noodling on the Mmes. de Winter