Archive | Crime fiction RSS feed for this section

Timothy Olyphant (b. May 20): “I’m attracted to roles that are unpredictable…”

20 May

olyphant

“I’m attracted to roles that are unpredictable, and if I can get my hands on something like that, I’m thrilled. I like performances where you don’t know what’s coming, moment to moment.”

~ Timothy Olyphant, b. 20 May 1968

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/39406565464191432/

Tags: , ,

Jeffrey Archer (b. Apr 15): “There’s no substitute for reading great novelists.”

15 Apr
archer

pinterest.com/pin/39406565466004264/

 

Jeffrey Archer, born 15 April 1940, is an English author and former politician. His books, starting with Kane and Abel, have sold at least 250 million copies worldwide.

Jeffrey Archer’s top 10 writing tips:

  1. Make time. “Decide when you’re going to write. Don’t be casual and only do it as and when it suits you. Don’t think you can write a novel after you’ve done a hard day’s work, it’s insulting to those professional novelists who spend their time doing nothing else.” 
  2. Be disciplined. “For example, I write from 6-8am, 10-12am, 2-4pm, 6-8pm. I keep that routine up for 40-50 days and handwrite every word. I then take a break and go back to it again a month later.” 
  3. Write what you know. “Don’t do vampires, wizards or ghosts because they’re in fashion. Jane Austen wrote about family life in a small village and gave us six of the greatest novels ever written.” 
  4. Get some fresh air. “I go for two long walks between sessions, for two reasons, physical and mental. The plot will buzz around in your mind while you are walking, continually churning over, which it can’t be while you’re actually writing.” 
  5. Do several drafts. “Do not imagine that the first draft of your book is the one that will be published. My latest novel, The Sins of the Father, was 14 drafts and took approximately 1000 hours.” 
  6. Be flexible. “If you think of something better half-way through the writing process, don’t be frightened to go back and incorporate it or even change the story completely.” 
  7. Seek opinions from professionals. “When you want an opinion on what you consider the finished script, seek it from a professional editor, an agent or someone you don’t know, through a third party. Do not seek an opinion from your wife, husband, partner, mistress or close friend. They will lie.” 
  8. Read the greats. “There is no substitute for reading great novelists, and instead of just enjoying their craft, think carefully about how they’ve achieved it. Do they spend pages on description, do they move the story on quickly, how do they make you turn the page? It’s all there in front of you if you look carefully, so at least when you try to do it, you have analysed how successful authors have managed it in the past.” 
  9. Stay fit. “If the body is a physical wreck – too much drinking, smoking, late nights – how can you expect the written word to be anything less than drunken, useless and tired?” 
  10. Don’t give up. “My first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, was turned down by 14 publishers, ended up with an advance of £3,000 and on first printing took a year to sell 3,000 copies. It is still extremely rare for a first book to be a best-seller.”

Tags: , , , , , ,

Word cloud: SCORPIO RISING

4 Apr

ScorpioRising1“If you like thrillers and detective stories, this one is a terrific read. It’s fast-paced and has plenty of twists and turns – as well as enough astrology and palmistry – to keep you flipping the pages.” ~ NCGR newsletter

Available at Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Mystery cloud: HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT

22 Mar

hips180315HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT, mystery-thriller by ALAN ANNAND: A man assumes his twin brother’s identity in order to alibi his own wife who’s accidentally killed his brother in an argument. But when he finds himself sharing a bed with his beautiful sister-in-law, he faces bigger challenges and harder choices.

4.5-star rating on Amazon. Available in ebook form for only $0.99 or its equivalent via Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Flipkart, Kobo and Smashwords.

~~~~~~~~~

???????????????????????????????Alan Annand is a graduate of the American College of Vedic Astrology and the British Faculty of Astrological Studies. He’s both a practicing astrologer and a crime novelist. His NEW AGE NOIR series (Scorpio Rising, Felonious Monk, Soma County) features astrologer Axel Crowe, whom one reviewer dubbed “Sherlock Holmes with a horoscope.”

Websites: www.navamsa.com, www.sextile.com

 

Tags: ,

Peter Robinson (b. Mar 17): “Writers have to be able to enjoy solitude…”

17 Mar
robinson

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465847373/

Peter Robinson, born 17 March 1950, is a Canadian crime writer born in Britain. He is best known for his crime novels set in Yorkshire featuring Inspector Alan Banks. He has written 25 books.

Writing quotes:

  1. I think writers have to be able to enjoy solitude rather than just endure it. I’ve always enjoyed being left alone with my imagination, ever since I was a kid.
  2. Put your bum on the chair and your fingers on the keyboard. Read widely, too. When my students fail it’s usually nothing to do with lack of talent but everything to do with lack of application. So many people want to be writers, but few actually want to write!
  3. I used to write my own versions of famous tales, such as William Tell or Robin Hood, and illustrate them myself, too. When I entered my teens, I got more into horror and science fiction and wrote a lot of short stories. A literary education complicated things and for many years I wrote nothing but poetry. Then I got back to story-telling.
  4. I like newspaper stories that are incomplete, that give me room to imagine the rest. It’s no good to me reading about something that’s all neatly solved and wrapped up. That’s why so many of my stories revolve around human psychology, around why someone commits a certain crime, or series of crimes. I don’t profess to know the answers but I like to explore the possibilities.

 

Tags: , ,

Mickey Spillane (b. Mar 9th): “Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle…”

9 Mar

spillane1

“Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it’s a letdown, they won’t buy any more. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.”

~ Mickey Spillane, b. 9 March 1918

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/39406565463797835/

 

Tags: , ,

FELONIOUS MONK: the Dell Horoscope book review

5 Mar

FM ebook thumb

This book review, written by Chris Lorenz, appears in the April 2015 issue of Dell Horoscope.

~~~~~~~~~

A freelance reporter for The Village Voice gets into trouble when he follows an ex-CIA agent to a spiritual retreat in Vermont. One afternoon he confronts the former agent, accusing him of smuggling stolen foreign antiquities. That night, the reporter is murdered. The ashram manager is accused of the crime but fortunately his friend, astrologer Axel Crowe, believes in his inno­cence and sets out to find the real culprit.

The drama thus unfolds in Felonious Monk, the second of Alan Annand’s “New Age Noir” series. Annand’s hero is not only adept at astrology, but also understands how to use synchronicity to his advantage. He can read palms from a distance and, as a former student of “Guruji”, his thoughts and actions are guided by ancient wisdom. Guruji has also taught him some martial arts, which Crowe has several occasions to use over the course of the story. But this New Age hero also has modern tools to assist him. Want to know who killed the reporter? There’s an app for that.

At 6:05 AM, Crowe opens the astrol­ogy app on his cell phone and asks the question, “Whodunnit?” Now for those who enjoy some good crime fiction, Felonious Monk fits the bill. The book is written almost entirely from the sleuth’s point of view as he works day and night in the shadowy underworld, fighting off surprise attacks and uncov­ering key clues, much like Sam Spade or Mike Hammer. And for the reader who appreciates a touch of mysticism, Felonious Monk also satisfies, especially with the attention given to Eastern religion, the good and bad karma, and the periodic sage quotes from Guruji.

Dell Horoscope April 2015Those with various astrology back­grounds may be stumped by the kind of astrology used in Felonious Monk. Crowe uses the Vedic horoscope, which does not include the outer planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, yet he also frequently uses horary principles. This detective arrives at magical deductions from the horary question, “Whodunnit?” but then horary astrology does seem quite magical in the hands of an experi­enced practitioner.

We’re introduced to Crowe’s apparent superpowers in chapter two. He’s giving a lecture on the ancient roots of astrology in India. During the Q&A session a skeptical professor asks, “Can you tell me how many kids I have?” After some snappy exchanges about the merits of the question, Crowe finally states, “You have three children. Boy-girl-boy in that order.” Astonishingly, he’s correct, and the profes­sor shamefully exits. Afterwards, we find out the secret of how Crowe knew the answer. Three questions were asked before the professor’s question, and they were asked by a man, a woman, and another man. The New Age detective connected the dots between the previous three questions and the professor’s children.

Does that actually work in the real world? The narrative is filled with the protagonist’s internal dialogue reminding readers that everything is connected to everything else. His classic film-noir antag­onism with the police is partially shaped by his astrological portrait of the killer, since he can’t tell the police his knowledge is based on a horary question. In the end, he defeats the killer and locates the missing Buddha statue with another horary ques­tion. This is not a spoiler, since we know the killer’s bad karma will eventually catch up with him.

It’s the journey through the pages of this book that is the most rewarding, enjoyable, and sometimes frightening. Crowe’s search takes him to Thailand, where he meets several fascinating characters. We see the culture’s poverty and how it makes some of its people immoral and treacherous. And we see the spiritu­al side of Thailand, its ancient temples and spiritual vistas. Crowe gets little sleep during his jaunts, but he apparent­ly regenerates himself through yoga and meditation. Are Crowe’s amazing abili­ties unique to him, or are they available to anyone who has the right teacher and a good understanding of astrology? Let me know when you find out.

~~~~~~~~~

 

???????????????????????????????Alan Annand is a Canadian astrologer and palmist with an education spanning both eastern and western astrology. He has diplomas from the American College of Vedic Astrology, as well as the British Faculty of Astrological Studies for whom he was their North American correspondence tutor for several years.

He is also a writer of crime fiction, including his NEW AGE NOIR series (Scorpio Rising, Felonious Monk, Soma County) featuring astrologer and palmist Axel Crowe, whom one reviewer has dubbed “Sherlock Holmes with a horoscope.”

Websites: www.navamsa.com, www.sextile.com

Read the highlighted reviews of Scorpio Rising on Pinterest.

Buy Annand’s New Age Noir series and other crime fiction on Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Flipkart, Kobo and Smashwords.

~~~~~~~~~

Tags: , , , ,

Elizabeth George (b. Feb 26): “I have to know the killer…”

26 Feb
george

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465739058/

Elizabeth George, born 26 February 1949, is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain. 11 of her novels have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

Quotes on writing:

  1. It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
  2. I wish that I’d known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn’t have found it so frightening to write.
  3. I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can’t be taught. Frankly, I don’t understand this point of view.
  4. I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.
  5. Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they’re in. It’s a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.
  6. Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first… You can’t do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.
  7. Lots of people want to have written; they don’t want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.

Tags: , , , ,

Richard North Patterson (b. Feb 22): “There’s a wonderful freedom to being a novelist.”

22 Feb
patterson_RN

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465714932/

Richard North Patterson, born 22 February 1947, is an American best-selling fiction writer of 22 novels. Before he wrote full time, he studied creative writing at the University of Alabama. He was also a lawyer. He served as Ohio’s Assistant Attorney General, a Watergate prosecutor, and as an attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission. His first novel, The Lasko Tangent, won an Edgar Allen Poe Award in 1979.

10 quotes on writing:

  1. The business of writing is empathising with situations that aren’t your own.
  2. Writing seems like the only job where what you think and feel really matters.
  3. I was 29 when I wrote my first novel. But I was 45 when I quit for good. I was a 16-year overnight success.
  4. There is a wonderful freedom to being a novelist – it’s self-assigned work. For someone who’s curious by nature, it’s a perfect job.
  5. The manuscript you submit [should not] contain any flaws that you can identify – it is up to the writer to do the work, rather than counting on some stranger in Manhattan to do it for him.
  6. Writing is re-writing. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospect of never publishing.
  7. Trial lawyers have to be story tellers. They have to arrange complex facts in attractive narratives; grasp character; understand judges, juries, make clients appealing, understandable. They do have a lot of stories to tell – vivid and interesting things to talk about.
  8. Write what you care about and understand. Writers should never try to outguess the marketplace in search of a saleable idea; the simple truth is that all good books will eventually find a publisher if the writer tries hard enough, and a central secret to writing a good book is to write one that people like you will enjoy.
  9. Monday through Friday, I get up at five, read The New York Times and begin writing by seven. I work with an outline of the chapter or scenes from each day and typically finish with original writing by noon. Throughout the afternoon my assistant and I work the draft over until it’s as good as it can be. Typically we’re not happy until late afternoon.
  10. The writer must always leave room for the characters to grow and change. If you move your characters from plot point to plot point, like painting by the numbers, they often remain stick figures. They will never take on a life of their own. The most exciting thing is when you find a character doing something surprising or unplanned. Like a character saying to me: “Hey, Richard, you may think I work for you, but I don’t. I’m my own person.”

 

Tags: , , ,

AL-QUEBECA: Terrorist strike in Montreal

8 Jan

Al-Quebeca_1

They said it could never happen here. But it happened yesterday in Paris. My mystery-thriller AL-QUEBECA provides a chilling account of a terrorist strike in Montreal. Read the top 10 reviews:
https://sextile.com/…/al-quebeca-fiction-that-could-be-tomo…/
http://www.amazon.com/Al-Quebeca-ebook/dp/B00CHQOY8O
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/al-quebeca-alan-…/1115214961
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/al-quebeca

Tags: , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →