Blog
#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...
Thankful
Maybe you're celebrating with friends or family today or settling down with a beloved pet or a Hallmark movie. Maybe you're out there on the front lines at a shelter or a protest, doing your bit to make this a better world. Wherever you are today, I'd like to reach...
Thankful Tuesday
I know Thanksgiving is coming up, but I'd love to use this #ThankfulTuesday to send out a whole-HEARTed love song to the amazing #bookstagram community.😍All authors fear being alone - and it is the greatest feeling in the world when, instead, your book gets...
Five songs Gal Raver wishes she wrote…
"Simon’s tour of the Boston music scene will make readers wish “Hold Me Down” included a link to iTunes." – Oline Cogdill, South Florida Sun Sentinel Clea Simon Blame Oline. She was the first reviewer to suggest that HOLD ME DOWN should have a playlist, and I've...
#FBF with Caroline Leavitt and Harvard Book Store
Caroline Leavitt is not only an astute critic and a crafter of glorious prose (check out her With or Without You), she's also a dear friend. So when the two of us got talking in this Harvard Book Store online event, the official launch of my new Hold Me Down, we...
Which crime?
For me, the question has never been why write about crime but, rather, which crime of many to focus on…. You see, there was the serial killer on my high school paper, the mugger in my apartment building, and, well, I explain it all here in CrimeSpree Magazine:...