After you’ve written your first (or second or third) draft, it’s time to go through your manuscript and cut out any unneeded words cluttering it up. Wordiness muddles your message, slows momentum, and drags an anchor through the forward movement of your story. Any of these can reduce tension, anticipation, and intrigue, all essential for […]
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I’m happy to announce my new release, The Kill Club is coming out July 8th. A bit of warning. The Kill Club has a lot of violence in it and over-the-top gore. If you enjoy that sort of thing (like I do) then you should have a lot of fun with this book. Coming October […]
Read more >I hope everyone is safe and doing well. I’ve gotten a few thousand emails from my readers asking why I haven’t finished the next Rebecca Watson Crime thriller. I know it’s been a long time coming and she’s definitely overdue for her next adventure. Minutes to Midnight is finally finished and is set to be […]
Read more >I’m happy to announce my new novel, The Kill Club is available for preorder. Just click on the book below and it will take you to the link. The eBook and print versions will go live July 8th. Here’s a preview of The Kill Club Welcome to The Kill Club—an informal men’s club is set in […]
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In Interrogation Techniques part one, I discussed verbal cues and how to use them to detect lies from a perpetrator. Although verbal cues can lead to a confession, many suspects are able to lie as easy as breathing. Through conscious thought and repetition, these types of suspects can often get away with lies and deception, […]
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Interrogations can be difficult to write. Too many writers get this wrong. This is usually due to the fact many people have only seen interrogations performed on television or in movies. I will admit television shows and movies provide great action scenes, but many examples used by Hollywood would get a detective fired or even […]
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March as you know is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. Why? Because a lot of military campaigns began in the spring. Soldiers march. Right? Or did I make that up? Sounds good to me. Also, Mars the planet is named after Mars the god. Why? Because the planet looks red – it’s […]
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One of the most difficult concepts for aspiring authors occurs when you bounce around from one character’s perspective to another, revealing the inner thoughts and feelings of multiple characters, without a proper scene break or clear signal. When you ping-pong back and forth between different characters’ viewpoints this is called head-hopping. Here’s a simple example. […]
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Writers are notorious for their love of words. Because of this, we have a hard time targeting certain words as enemies. If you don’t take the time to dig deep in your manuscript, searching for enemy words, you risk weakening your story. This robs the reader of your full potential and they may decide to […]
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What Does “Show, Don’t Tell” Mean? Good writing tends to draw an image in the reader’s mind instead of just telling the reader what to think or believe. Here’s a sentence that tells: Mr. Jeffries was a fat, ungrateful old man. That gets the information across, but it’s boring. Most writers who tell tend to […]
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