Blog
Stephen Mitchell’s “The First Christmas”
As many of you know, I still review for the Boston Globe. I don't share all my reviews, but this was a particularly timely book – a Zen take on the Nativity (with a gorgeous illustration). Read it online here. BOOK REVIEW Away in a manger in ‘The First Christmas’ A...
Happy Jólabókaflóðið!
Iceland's Jólabókaflóðið – which translates to "book flood" – is a great holiday born of necessity. Although this northern nation has a great literary history, its island location has at times left it isolated. In the lean years following World War II that meant...
Five compelling questions
That's the name of Shawn Reilly Simmons' podcast, and now I know it's true. Shawn — an author and one of the brains behind the annual Malice Domestic traditional mystery festival — is super easy to talk to, and that means we authors tend to spill the beans about Hold...
Gina Arnold: The Monkees, music, and me
I read Gina Arnold long before I met her. When I was coming up as a music writer, in the '80s, she was already an established critic, with bylines in Spin and the Village Voice. Somewhere in there — in between gigs with Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and a host...
“Rough and redemptive” raves Fredericksburg Star
Overjoyed about this rave review of HOLD ME DOWN in the Sunday Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star: SEX, DRUGS, MUSIC —AND MURDER For a few rockers—the Rolling Stones are the archetype—the road goes on forever. For many, it detours into ordinary life: work, family,...
#TBT That’s Throw Back Tewksbury!
Want to set your mystery in a rock club? Hiding clues in art? You might want to join this Tewksbury Public Library writing group! At the invitation of the lovely Library and fellow crime fiction author Dale T. Phillips, I did my best to explain not only how I used the...
Understanding monsters, surviving monsters
Nobody in our high school was completely surprised when Joel Rifkin turned out to be a serial killer... (This essay originally ran on the SHOTS crime and thriller ezine, which you can access here (or go to...
Talking about tattoos over at Mystery Fanfare
She rubs her thumb over the F clef on her wrist. A reminder, faded now, of what she had. The cost … [Thanks to Janet Rudolph for posting this over at Mystery Fanfare! Just in case you missed it, I'm running it here too] Gal Raver, my protagonist, has a tattoo of...
“To be fearless…” (an interview)
To be fearless is to let the creative impulse take you where it will. ... Abby Frucht and I went deep when we chatted about writing, process, and Hold Me Down back in October. The original interview ran on the JMWW blog, and I'm now reprinting it here: NO HOLDS...
What makes any of us victims? What made me?
(This ran in today's Boston Globe, reprinted here in full.) ALEKSANDRA/ADOBE What makes a victim? This might seem like an odd question for a writer of crime fiction, where the emphasis is usually on the crime, if not the criminal. But, recently, as I branched into the...