For close to 20 years, anytime I've been asked to provide advice to aspiring writers, one of my bits of wisdom has been "Finish the book." So many newbie authors get wrapped up in perfecting the first chapter. Or the first three chapters. They tweak and rewrite and fiddle and fix ... and never get beyond those opening pages. Then they get a newer, better idea and start a new project, where they work to perfect those opening pages yet again.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Which is why I strongly advise powering on and finishing the book. Honestly, those perfected first chapters will very likely end up needing drastic revisions once you get the entire story down. So, don't worry about perfection. Write the shitty first draft. Don't edit until you have a completed manuscript to work from. This has been my advice.  And now I'm defying it. I'm working on a proposal for a new book that's been inside my brain for the better part of a year. In the last few months, I...

We are solidly in the DEAD of winter. Every year, I reach a point where I proclaim (or mutter or yell, depending), "I'm sick of winter." Surprisingly, it hasn't happened yet this year. All I need to do is look at the news about what the rest of the country is going through--California is burning, snow blankets New Orleans, the southern Atlantic coast is freezing--and then I look out my frosted windows at a mere few inches of snow, which is pretty mild by Pennsylvania standards. Yes, it hit -11 yesterday morning, but I didn't have to go anywhere. Neither did my semi-retired husband. Our furnace kept the house comfy.  I have nothing worth complaining about.  Granted, that rarely stops me.  Today, I do need to set foot outside. I have kitchen scraps that need to go to the compost heap. I have a bag of trash that needs to go out to the can. I haven't made the stroll to the mailbox yet this week. But it's supposed to go "up" to 27 degrees, which will ...

There’s a lot up in the air for the coming year. I have two books (#3 and #4 in the Detective Honeywell series) coming out, but I have no titles, no covers, no release dates. I blogged last week on Writers Who Kill about how the only thing we authors have control over is writing the next book. While I will be writing #5 in the series this year, it’s not due to my editor until December, which leaves me with some wiggle room. As I teased in yesterday’s post, I have a plan. I’ve been outlining and starting to draft a standalone novel. I’m calling it a domestic suspense wrapped up in a police procedural. My intention is to have opening chapters and a synopsis ready to hand over to my agent in March, so she can start shopping it around. Then, in April, I can jump back into Matthias and Emma’s world for the rest of the year. I don’t have a lot on my “events” schedule yet. In February, I’m doing a reading with my friend Bill Gormley in Pittsburgh, but I don’t have any real details yet. In A...