by Helen Currie Foster August 8, 2022 Our family’s favorite mystery quote (bolded below) appears in Strong Poison, by Dorothy Sayers,...

by N. M. Cedeño Many writers find motivation in challenging themselves in various ways. Some attempt to write a novel length manuscript...

By N. M. Cedeño Many of the stories I write aren’t accepted the first time I submit them for publication. The majority have to be...

by Kathy Waller I said to my critique partner this morning, The whole project is stinky it stinks it’s fatally flawed just nothing no...

by N. M. Cedeño Although I may veer off into other areas, my reading pile usually comprises two main categories of books: mysteries and...

So what if I wasn’t born in the 1960s? I can do research! In 2020, I came across a call for submissions for mystery short stories to be...

by Kathy Waller George Woodstock received the peculiar phone call on his sixty-sixth birthday. . . He let the phone ring twice, then...

By K.P. Gresham First off, the best job I ever had (short of writing mysteries) was teaching. And yes, I taught Middle Schoolers, which...

by N.M. Cedeño Setting a story in the past requires the author to do research to make sure the details of the story are correct. For me,...

by K .P. Gresham I suspect most of us have our secrets about how we survived the Pandemic of ’20-’21. Video games, binge-watching movies,...

by Kathy Waller Today is Memorial Day, the last Monday in May, when we remember the men and women of the military to whom we cannot say,...

by Helen Currie Foster We read to learn, we read to be entertained. We begged at age three, “Tell me a story.” The stories began, “Once...

“All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison.” Paracelsus, Swiss physician (1493 –1541)...

by Helen Currie Foster In the back of the closet I recently unearthed my mother’s old Caswell Massey “Gardenia” bubble bath. The...

By N. M. Cedeño Do you write in more than one genre? Do you blend genres or sub-genres? I do. Some sub-genres seem to lend themselves...

Try to imagine a mystery without its setting. What? You’re having trouble? Open a mystery and be denied the setting. What? You’re getting...

by K.P. Gresham I recently appeared on a “Writing Humor in Mysteries” panel at the Pflugerville, Texas, Library along with fellow authors...

Mystery readers are tetchy. We want an interesting plot with a fair shot at noting each clue—but don’t want to guess whodunnit too soon....

I know, you’re asking yourself what barbecue has to do with mystery writing, my other beloved topic. Barbecuing, like writing (see K.P....