http://www.actsofmalice.com Mystery writer Tammy Cravit's musings on mystery fiction, the craft of writing and living a writerly life. Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:39:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I was chatting with my father about my novel-in-progress tonight, and he made an interesting observation. My dad, you see, has been an advertising and marketing guy for most of his professional career. "We used to have a saying back in the days when I was making radio commercials," he ... http://www.actsofmalice.com/post/19 Since I got my iBook (about which more at www.onemacwriting.com), I've been evolving a set of tools that works well for my writing. One of the indispensables on the Mac has been Notational Velocity, a sort of minimally structured free-form information capture tool. Alas, Notational Velocity is a Mac-only tool, ... http://www.actsofmalice.com/post/18 As writers, and as human beings, we are all like rocks, worn into interesting shapes by the action of a thousand, or million, waves washing over us over and over. The individual impact of one wave might be insignificant at the time, but the cumulative effect of all of them ... http://www.actsofmalice.com/post/17 I've been pondering lately why it is that people seem so fascinated with how we writers work. Readers -- and those that aren't -- always want to know where we get our ideas, what tools we use, what process we use to weave a tale from thin air. Some would-be ... http://www.actsofmalice.com/post/6 I've been reading an interesting book this week, Freeing Your Creativity by Marshall J. Cook. One of the concepts that Cook, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, talks about in his book is that of the Squelcher. Squelchers are the kryptonite of the writer's psyche, those seductive lies that our ... http://www.actsofmalice.com/post/16 No, this isn't a post about red herrings, the sort of devious wrong turns with which mystery writers like to ensnare their readers. Rather, it's in response to a comment on the Murderati blog from my friend Pari Noskin Taichert, about throwing away a whole bunch of great prose because ... http://www.actsofmalice.com/post/15 Whether you're writing mysteries, thrillers or even romances, a key part of any story is tension. Will the pretty young housewife evade the crazed killer hiding in her bathroom closet? Will the cop ferret out the mad poisoner, or will he strike again? Will the beautiful maiden find her Prince ... http://www.actsofmalice.com/post/14 We're back after a long and involuntary hiatus, about which more later. For today's post, though, I wanted to share my response to a Murderati post by the inestimable Pari Noskin Taichert. Pari asks: Does publisher brand matter at all? Do Harlequin or St. Martin's mean anything anymore? Is Simon & ... http://www.actsofmalice.com/post/13 Over on the excellent Murderati blog, Pari Noskin Taichert posed an interesting question: What is it, in the end, that makes a reader pick up a book? Is it the relentless crush of Madison Avenue pushing slick glossy ads and co-op space on the reading public? Or is it something ... http://www.actsofmalice.com/post/12 Admit to someone that you're a writer, and one of the first questions out of their mouths is usually "Where do you get your ideas?" Some people will even suggest that you should take their ideas and write them...splitting the money 50/50, of course. I wonder why it is ... http://www.actsofmalice.com/post/11