Murder She Writes

Time 2020-12-13 11:03:37

Web Name: Murder She Writes

WebSite: http://www.murdershewrites.com

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Nov, 08TOO FAR GONEIf you didn t know, TOO FAR GONE is out and has been since last week. I ve just been really bad about blogging for the last year (or three!) so forgot to aAllison Brennan, Allison Brennan, Books, Books, Books!, Writing PublishingAug, 14ABANDONEDWe re not supposed to have favorites. Like, kids. I m a mom and I m not supposed to have a favorite kid. And I don t. I might have a favorite kAllison Brennan, Allison Brennan, Books, Books, Books!, Writing PublishingAug, 11Who Are You? Personality TestsRemember when you were a teenager or maybe more recent! when you loved filling out personality tests to find out what kind of person you are? Ha …Allison Brennan, Allison Brennan, Writing Publishing, Writing LifeFeb, 13Erica Spindler, Storyteller Extraordinaire!I m thrilled to have my friend and amazing suspense author Erica Spindler back to Murder She Writes. Enjoy! And while you re enjoying her blog, check out hAllison Brennan, Allison Brennan, Books, Books, Books!, Guest BloggersFeb, 05Welcome Back Lisa Black!I m thrilled to host Lisa Black again at Murder She Writes. Not only because she s a terrific person, but because she writes terrific books with faAllison Brennan, Books, Books, Books!, Our Guests FriendsJan, 30BREAKING POINT out today!Woo hoo! It s another release day in the Brennan house. BREAKING POINT the 13th (!) book in the Lucy Kincaid series is out today! Bella Caruso suAllison Brennan, Allison Brennan, Books, Books, Books!, Writing PublishingJan, 16The Story Behind the StoryBREAKING POINT is out in two weeks! I m really excited about this book for several reasons. 1) The cover. I LOVE this cover. It hits all the right spots for me. Allison Brennan, Allison Brennan, Books, Books, Books!, Writing PublishingNov, 02Articles, Books and BlogsHi gang first, if your comment doesn t show up it s because it s in moderation. I ve had a huge problem with spam and am trying to findAllison Brennan, Allison Brennan, Books, Books, Books!, Writing PublishingSep, 12The Kick-Ass HeroineThis summer I binge watched HAWAII FIVE-O (all 7 seasons) and loved it great ensemble cast, over-the-top action, great dialogue. It was an all-around fun cop sAllison Brennan, Allison Brennan, Movies and Television, Writing PublishingAug, 30Writing is RewritingFirst, before we get to our irregularly scheduled program, great news! SHATTERED is #67 on the USA Today bestseller list. via GIPHY If you haven t bought SHATTERAllison Brennan, Allison Brennan, Books, Books, Books!, Writing Publishing I deleted two chapters today and I feel good.Okay, not great, but good. No writer likes to delete their words. We want to think that everything we write is amazing when we write it and worth reading but it s not. I ve never been afraid to slash and burn, but too many writers I ve talked to are scared to death. They either think they re amateurs who don t know what they re doing if they have to cut something, or they think they re idiots who can t write. Or worse they think everything they write is brilliant and if readers or New York agents don t see that, then they are the problem, not the writing.The truth is, every author worth her salt needs to know how to self-edit. Whether that means cutting whole chapters or tweaking a scene, it s all important to crafting the best story for readers. Not every word you write needs to stay on the page. Not every chapter needs to be in the book.There are two forms of self-editing. The second I m not really going to talk about. That s the line-by-line editing. When your book is complete, you go through it front to back and massage the text. Cut paragraphs, maybe scenes; rewrite dialogue to sound natural; fix repetition and find better ways to say something. Sometimes, completely rewrite the book. That s all necessary. But what I really want to talk about is developmental self-editing. And this gets tricky. Read more It s been a busy couple of months!In addition to the release of TOO FAR GONE, the 14th (!!!) Lucy Kincaid thriller, I finished NOTHING TO HIDE, revised, and just received the copy edits today. I know what I ll be doing over Thanksgiving break! NOTHING TO HIDE is the 15th Lucy book. It was one of those stories that I loved the concept, but was much harder to execute than I first thought. In the end, though, I was very happy with the way it turned out. Though I almost lost the copyedits the package was nearly destroyed in transport. I m all for eco-friendly packaging if it WORKS!Eco-lite FAIL!I also wrote a Lucy novella. It s tentatively called STORM WARNING and while I don t know exactly when it ll be released, it ll be out sometime before NOTHING TO HIDE likely mid-to-late March. It s ebook only (for now) but I promise a nice, juicy story that can stand alone. Lucy and Nate are sent to pick up one of the San Antonio FBIs ten most wanted who was arrested in a small rural community three hours northwest of San Antonio. The small jail floods during an early September storm and they can t wait for the Marshal s to get their guy back to town. And the journey back is harrowing and filled with danger and that s only the first half of the story! Read more If you didn t know, TOO FAR GONE is out and has been since last week. I ve just been really bad about blogging for the last year (or three!) so forgot to announce (though I did send out a newsletter!)TOO FAR GONE hit the USA Today bestsellers list today at #35! (yeah!) I m still mourning the loss of the NYT Mass Market list, because it would have most likely hit there as well .. only 9 mass markets were in the top 50 of the USAT bestsellers list. Sigh.TOO FAR GONE is the FOURTEENTH Lucy Kincaid/Sean Rogan romantic thriller, this time also featuring Jesse Spade, Sean s son. Here s one of my favorite scenes in the book. Sean and Jesse are picking up dinner while Lucy is working late:* * *They walked into the Rib House—a casual hole-in-the-wall restaurant that had the best BBQ Sean had found in the city—and ordered the largest family meal, two and a half pounds of meat and four sides. Sean was serious about wanting leftovers. They sat at a table while they waited. “Dad, can I ask you something?” Sean’s stomach fluttered. Jesse had started calling him Dad more often than not, and every single time Sean felt goose bumps. “Anything, you know that.” Jesse remained silent. “Is something bothering you?” “No—sort of. I want to change my name. To Jesse Rogan.” Nothing could have surprised Sean more, or made him happier. “Okay.” “So you’re good with it?” “I’m more than good.” What could he say to Jesse? He was ecstatic. Jesse was his kid—and Jesse was proud of it. Just like Sean was of Jesse. “You didn’t think I’d be upset about it, did you?” “No, but—well, I haven’t told my mom yet. I looked on the internet about the rights of kids—kids don’t have a lot of rights.” That was for certain. It had been a bone of contention between Sean and his brother Duke when Duke, as his guardian, made some decisions Sean didn’t agree with that impacted Sean’s life. “Maybe if you talk to her you’ll be surprised what she says.” “Maybe. But—well, I guess I don’t want to hurt her feelings.” “I can respect that.” “But I don’t want to wait until I’m eighteen—when I know I can do it without anyone’s permission.” “So you want advice on how to talk to her?” “I guess I wanted to make sure you were okay with it.” “I am very okay.” “And then—maybe you could be there when I tell her.” Sean didn’t know how well that would go over. “If you think that would be easier. When I take you back to Sacramento, I can stay for a few days, no problem. But you need to think about it a little more. You don’t want your mom to think that we’re ganging up on her, or pressuring her.” Sean didn’t actually care—Madison had hurt him deeply, and his knee-jerk reaction was to hurt her back. But fortunately, he wasn’t the brash, reactive man he used to be. He recognized that his son would look to him for guidance, emulate him in many ways. He wanted to be the best person he could be, even when he wanted to rub reality into Madison. He frowned. “I didn’t think about that.” “We don’t have to make the decision right now. We have time. Just think about how you want to do it. You’ll know what’s the right choice. But Jesse? You could not have made me happier.”* * *My publisher arranged for a blog tour in two weeks: Here is the schedule. I ll post links the week of the events.And don t forget, I run a contest every month on my website. Sign up, get my newsletter, and be entered to win a free signed book. We re not supposed to have favorites. Like, kids. I m a mom and I m not supposed to have a favorite kid. And I don t. I might have a favorite kid on one day, and then another day it s another kid. Maybe the kid who makes me coffee in the middle of the day because he notices I m dragging, or the one who calls me just to say hello, or the one who plops down on my office couch and spontaneously tells me about his day without me having to drag it out of him yeah, sometimes I have a favorite, but it s short-lived, because I love them all. Ditto with books. I love all my books and hate them equally. Such is the writer s life. We have highs and lows. We usually love our book when we start it. It s new, it s exciting, it s fresh. Then we hate it. We get stuck, our characters don t cooperate, we have no idea who the killer is or how to catch them or if they even should be caught because after all they killed a child rapist and shouldn t all child rapists be dead? Then we love it because we type THE END and it s done. It s now our favorite book of all time because it s DONE. It s OVER and we get to start something new!Then we get revisions and we think, Damn, we really suck. We can t write. But we muddle through and think, okay, maybe this doesn t suck as much as we think. But we are so damn tired of reading and reading and rewriting and rewriting and cutting and slicing and adding and subtracting we want it to just be DONE.Then a couple months pass and suddenly the page proofs are on our desk and we can sit down and give the book one final proofread. And that s when it s real. Did I write this? This isn t half-bad. It s actually pretty good. In fact, I really like it. Except, why I use the word retribution three times in one paragraph AND NOT CATCH IT THE FIRST HUNDRED TWENTY SIX TIMES I READ IT! Yes, this is the writer s life. Read more Remember when you were a teenager or maybe more recent! when you loved filling out personality tests to find out what kind of person you are? Ha yeah, we already know, right? But now with the Internet it s so much easier.Seriously, I never took much stock in personality tests. Sure, based on your answers they can tell you if you re an introvert or extrovert (I don t think most of us need a test for that); they might give you some insight into why you like a messy desk or a clean desk, or what sort of work environment suits your personality, but to dig down deep into what makes you tick and where you will thrive (or not thrive) hmmm, not really.Except for one.Twenty years ago I was working on a political campaign and the candidate also was part of a family business. Working with family is a completely different animal because, you know, you can t really fire someone. They hired a business consultant who had them take the Myers-Briggs test on Temperament, Character and Intelligence. The benefit to their business and their family was phenomenal. They all read about their family/staff members in order to find out how they best work. When you understand how someone thinks and works, you can better work with them. I could go into great detail, but short version? Their business and family relationships started to thrive and so Greg, who I worked for, bought all his campaign staff the book PLEASE UNDERSTAND ME by David Keirsey because he wanted to know where we landed and how we work best.I was skeptical, but I took the test. (This was before the test was online, we had to do the hard work of scoring ourself!) I was an ENTP: The Inventor. And wow. It was me. Especially how I get bored with repetitive work and am always seeking ways to outwit the system. I ended up reading the entire book and learning how to better work with my colleagues because I finally understood how they work best and how to better communicate. Read more Allison Brennan is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of nearly three dozen romantic thrillers and mysteries, including the Lucy Kincaid series and the Max Revere series. She lives in Northern California with her husband, five children, and assorted pets. FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid tackles her most dangerous case yet ... while her fiance Sean Rogan receives life-changing news. Read more

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