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Holiday Happiness.  Happy holidays.  One and the same? Not by a longshot.    The phrasing of “holiday happiness” and happy holidays” is the difference between a state of being versus a wish. Not everyone has the opportunity or the desire to experience either.  During the past the few weeks, everywhere I went, people told me “Happy

What Do Teen Readers Want? by B.K. Stevens Earlier this month, I participated in an unusual panel at Bouchercon in Raleigh, North Carolina. The panel’s topic wasn’t unusual—these days, most mystery conferences devote at least one panel to young adult novels—but the panelists were. Three of them were real, live young adults, members of a high-school

The Need for Stories by Sandra Carey Cody “We’re always the same age inside.” Gertrude Stein The Jennie Connors/Riverview Manor mysteries are set in a retirement community and the characters are a variety of ages. The youngest is Jennie’s six-year-old son; the oldest is a ninety-pound, ninety-something, feisty southern belle who still thinks like a

The Allure of a Mystery Series by James M. Jackson One of my great pleasures of mystery fan conferences such as Malice Domestic and Left Coast Crime is the opportunity to talk with a wide variety of readers. When I get to chatting with a reader I usually ask about favorite authors to compare notes.

Go Set A Watchman – a Draft Not a Sequel by Debra H. Goldstein Once upon a time, a book by Harper Lee titled To Kill a Mockingbird was published. The book was tightly written, had beautiful descriptions of the people living in a small southern town, and provided a moral compass for generations of

EVERYTHING YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT GENRES…But Were Afraid to Ask By Jayne Ormerod (Whispered conversation between two young ladies recently overheard in a library bathroom…) “Do you know anything about, you know…what they’re talking about in there?” “No. I’m pretty inexperience when it comes to that kind of stuff.” “Me too.” “Is there

Openings by Sherry Harris Oh, the pressure of writing the perfect first line, the perfect first paragraph. I’ve heard over and over if you don’t grab readers in the beginning you can just forget about it. (Me? As a reader I’m a bit more patient with a story.) So you would think when I was

Do Fictional Characters Make Demands? How Two Holocaust Survivors Entered My Book by Kay Kendall Authors often assert that characters can take off on their own and run away with their stories. One writer said, “When Jim told me he was the killer, I had to change my plot.” But such remarks have made me