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Articles by W.A. Winter
The Registration by Madison Lawson: Featured Excerpt
Imagine it’s legal to commit one murder in your lifetime—if you register the victim and accomplish the kill within fourteen days. Then imagine a stranger has registered YOU. Read an excerpt from Madison Lawson's new thriller The Registration! Chapter 1 Lynnel feels the sun cutting into her skin, a harsh reminder of her own mortality. She rolls forward onto her toes and holds her hand up against the sun. The motion puts an old scar on her forearm in her direct line of sight.
Chaos and Tumult as Fuel for Fiction
Tom Bradby's espionage thriller Yesterday's Spy is out now. Today he visits the site to ponder his writing process, and to discuss how tumultuous times serve as a form of inspiration for his fiction—and highlight our humanity. Ten novels—and more than a few screenplays—into my writing career, an interview question rather took me by surprise the other day. What prompts you, I was asked, to open your computer and start writing a new story?
Chop n’ Bop Playlist: Girl Power Anthems for Cooking
To celebrate the publication of Six Feet Deep Dish author Mindy Quigley kindly shares her bopping playlist with us. Read on for more on what writing, music, and Mindy's uncanny similarities with Olympic gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps. Before a big race, swimmer Michael Phelps listened to a playlist to amp up his energy, increase his focus, and get in the zone. Maybe you can picture him, headphones on, bopping his chin to a beat that was audible only to him. I’m exactly the same.
Book Review: Murder at Beacon Rock by Alyssa Maxwell
In Alyssa Maxwell's historical mystery Murder at Beacon Rock, The New York Yacht Club’s exclusive gathering at a famed Rhode Island mansion hits stormy seas when reporter Emma Cross discovers a drowned corpse. Read on for Janet Webb's review! Mysteries featuring historical figures shed light on the times in which they lived. It’s a bonus when the setting is a gorgeous destination. Welcome to Newport, Rhode Island, July 1900.
My Journey with An Affair of Spies
With his new novel An Affair of Spies coming out tomorrow, Ronald H. Balson visits the site to share what compelled him to write this historical thriller, and what he hopes readers will get from it. Isn’t it interesting how one event, simple in its origin, will lead to another? One might say it sets up a chain reaction. So it was that while researching a project, I came across a typewritten letter that led me on the road to write An Affair of Spies. In 1939, A.
Book Review: The Marsh Queen by Virginia Hartman
Virginia Hartman's The Marsh Queen follows a Washington, DC, artist as she faces her past and the secrets held in the waters of Florida’s lush swamps and wetlands. Check out Doreen Sheridan's review! Loni Mae Murrow is happy in her job as a bird artist for the Smithsonian up in the nation’s capital.
Five Essential Lessons from Seven Crime Fiction Masters
W.A. Winter's new thriller My Name Is Joe LaVoie—inspired by a crime spree that shocked the Midwest in the 1950s—is out now. The author visits the site today to share five quintessential tips for crime fiction writers. Good crime-fiction writers don’t learn their craft in school or via online programs. We learn from other good crime-fiction writers—that is, from their books and public comments. We learn to write fiction the way we learned to tie our shoes: by watching and then doing.
Book Review: A Certain Darkness by Anna Lee Huber
Anna Lee Huber's A Certain Darkness is a historical mystery set in Downton Abbey-era post-war England, and featuring indomitable heroine Verity Kent. Check out Doreen Sheridan's review! The Great War might be over, but English spy Verity Kent and her husband Sidney are still hot on the trail of a traitor in their own government who might be funneling weapons to Irish Republicans.
What’s In a Name?
In Dan Chaon’s new dystopian thriller, Sleepwalk, his narrator/protagonist draws on a roster of similar but different names, reacting to the shifting existential requirements of his ever-precarious situation. There’s Will Bear, Billy Bayer, Barry Billingsly, and Liam Bahr among his dozen-odd aliases, and each serves a (usually devious) purpose. As Chaon’s spooky tale unfurls, we learn that many in his supporting cast have aliases, too.
On Using Crime Fiction to Reveal the Dark History of Minneapolis
On the wall behind my office desk hangs a large, finely detailed street map of my hometown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, circa 1950s. Almost everything I’ve written over a long career––fiction and nonfiction both––has been situated on its rectangular grid, circumscribed by the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers and dotted by its famous Chain of Lakes.
5 Points to Consider About Your Crime Fiction Setting
If geography is destiny, the setting of your crime fiction is crucial. I’ve never gone out and scouted locations. My novels are grounded in familiar territory. I’ve planted the four Midwestern noir novels I’ve written during the past several years securely in my hometown—Minneapolis, Minnesota, and its immediate environs. I want to write what I know.
The best often-overlooked Minnesota books to get through a long winter
Home Minnesota books Curt's list Who am I? After more than 30 years in daily journalism in Minnesota, I moved to a trout stream near Durango, Colo., to stage a second act. Editors at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where I worked for 26 years, gave me a freelance contract to write a Minnesota History column every Sunday. It’s morphed into a popular crowd-sourcing of history with readers feeding me delicious family stories.
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