Killer Nashville invites authors and other writers to blog about their craft.
The one thing as a fiction writer to understand and accept: in reality, you have very little control over how many people will pay for your writing, or how many readers you will get. None. Advertising, quality, being deserving, none of it is a guarantee of sales. If your book sells, great, but even some […]
Sharing Options Killer Nashville Interview with 2022 Guest of HonorHank Phillippi Ryan KN: First, we loved Her Perfect Life. What sparked the idea? HPR: Oh, thank you! That is the best thing an author can ever hear. Here’s the beginning of the idea: When I worked in Atlanta, in the 80s, I was anchoring the […]
Sharing Options Winning the Claymore Awardby Mary Bush My road from a Claymore Award hopeful to being the 2021 Claymore Award winner is a little unusual in that it spans two years. I discovered the Claymore Award in the winter of 2020 and thought ‘what a fantastic contest’. Not only did it give an unpublished […]
Fire can be a crime writer’s best friend. It can be a powerful plot device. When I decided to write a thriller about a serial killer who uses fire to cover up his crimes, I knew I had to do my homework. Here are some of the things I discovered, which may be useful to […]
A successful mystery story has two bookends: hooking the reader with an emotional response at the beginning and providing a satisfying payoff at the end. Sounds simple enough, right? But skip the first part and the reader will find a reason not to finish it. Skip the second bit and they’ll close the book feeling […]
Your book is published! You are marketing, sales are growing steadily, and happy readers abound. Then you get a notice: one of the people you interviewed is saying they did not permit you to publish their words. Cease and desist; their attorney has your contact information. Do you have an Interview Agreement signed by this […]
I am a bone fide scientist and have been all my life. At the age five I watched the Challenger shuttle launch (and to my horror explode), and corrected school staff on their knowledge of dinosaurs. At nine years old my schoolteacher Mrs. Gray taught me about nuclear physics and the Chernobyl disaster. This trend […]
Launching our books doesn’t have to be a formidable task. Instead, consider the it a challenge we can meet head-on with a plan that works. The plan to market our book has many layers but with one goal in mind: to place our books into the hands of readers. We are passionate about our books […]
It is the five senses that bring a setting to life. Can you hear the sound of Big Ben? I can hear it in my mind. Do I have to explain what lemon gelato on the Isle of Capri tastes like? Do the very words “lemon gelato” make you feel as if you are there? […]
Technology in law enforcement is really beginning to amaze me. Gone are the days when we would just kick in a door and run through the house. I’m on my way to a call of an apparent suicide now. This guy lives on the 9th floor of an ocean-front condo. The neighbor calls and says […]