Recent Articles
Review: Hard Knocks
Hard Knocks by Zoë Sharp – $3.99 E The phrase “cozy mystery” brings the image of my Aunt Mabel sipping tea by the fire on a rainy day while reading a mystery featuring a heroine of her age and gentleness. As you might have already guessed—I’ve never read a cozy mystery.* Zoë Sharp provides something [...]
3 Lessons Learned: Writing a Thriller Heroine
Can a Man Write a Female Leads? Why not? Ms. Rowling wrote a boy’s story. The Wall Street Journal ran an article just last week about women writing under male pseudonyms when writing male characters. Why couldn’t I write a female protagonist in a thriller? I love female leads in thrillers. I’d been working on [...]
5 Things I Tried to Accomplish
Along with thousands of other people in the last thirty days, I’ve released a thriller. It’s fun, exciting, and unputdownable or your money back*. But with all those competitors out there, the question I asked was, how do I make mine stand out? What niche is out there that would make mine unique? I hope [...]
Review: The Girl Who Would Be King
The Girl Who Would Be King — by Kelly Thompson $4.99 E This book is better than Hunger Games. A hell of a lot better. More exciting, more innovative, more fascinating. And yet Traditional Publishers won’t touch it. Why? Because it doesn’t fit their formula. It has no genre, no shelf at B&N, no section [...]
Review: Beekeeper
Beekeeper — by Juliet Moore $0.99 E / $6.99 PB A debut mystery written by a romance writer? Normally I would pass anything remotely related to ‘romance’ (don’t scowl, I don’t read cookbooks or poetry either). But for some odd reason I was drawn to this book. Maybe I was secretly looking for a little [...]
Review: Operator
Operator — by David Vinjamuri $3.97E / $9.97 PB Some columnist quoted me in Forbes — obviously an indicator of an advanced intellect — so I read his bio and discovered that he’d written a thriller. Any writer smart enough to quote me deserves to be read. I bought it, I read it … and [...]
6 Things a Random Penguin Might Step In
A quick look at the business model can tell us the future of publishing as seen by the people who drive 25% of it today. Why are they doing this? The recent decision by Pearson (PSON.LN) and Bertelsmann to spin-off their traditional book publishing businesses, Penguin and Random House respectively, has less to do with [...]
Review: Mad River
Mad River – by John Sandford, $27.95 HC/$12.99 E There are only three authors whose books I will preorder, no matter what they write.* John Sandford, Lee Child, and Zoë Sharp. All three for the same reasons: I learn a great deal about writing from them; they each have a unique talent; they never disappoint; [...]
Review: Kill Alex Cross
Kill Alex Cross – by James Patterson, $28.99 HC/$9.99 E I am a capitalist. That means I believe the market never lies. If poetry doesn’t sell anymore it’s not because people are uneducated heathens (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) but because the public’s tastes have changed. If something sells well, that means it has [...]
Review: Riot Act
Riot Act – by Zoë Sharp, $3.49 E Every book I read has a great endorsement by someone or other. Zoë Sharp’s first book, Killer Instinct, had a rousing Foreword by Lee Child. That caught my eye. Mr. Child reported that someone said, I love your books but Zoe Sharp is better. Interesting admission from [...]
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