A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about 10 common mistakes I’ve seen in novel writing due to my day job as a fiction editor. Have you ever written or said something, taken a certain position, and then seen examples to refute it? What I should have added to that article was something along these lines: fiction writing styles change over time. When Charles Dickens wrote Little Dorrit, his writing style was popular in his day. But styles change. There’s a reason no one wears bell-bottoms today. The mistakes I cited weren’t grammatical problems; rather, they were “mistakes” according to current expectations on the part of publishers and literary agents. The word current is important to note here because who knows what the popular style will be in a decade. Maybe someday confining a single viewpoint to each scene will seem old-fashioned. Maybe the next big trend will be…
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Several years ago, I discovered Erik Larson’s engrossing book Eric’s Storm about the 1900 hurricane in Galveston, Texas. When I read his The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (which weds the 1893 World’s Fair and serial killer H.H. Holmes), I was hooked. So it was with great expectations that I recently read his latest book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. Once again, Larson didn’t disappoint. Since college, where I minored in history, I’ve always loved books that wed history with suspense. Perhaps that’s why history has always played a major role in the suspense novels I like to write. If you think history is boring, you’ve never read Larson, who is a master at writing engrossing historical suspense. What adds to the intrigue is that his novels are true. Every line of dialogue in his…
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I have a confession to make. I’ve probably seen more movies based on classics than classics I’ve actually read. But now I’m hoping to change that. Recently, Audible.com featured a list of free classics for those who have downloaded the free Kindle counterparts. I capitalized on the opportunity and grabbed as many of the free classics as I could (unfortunately, not all of them on the list are still free, but some may still be). Why did I gravitate to this list of free audio classics? For one, I love freebies. (For those of you who know me on Facebook, you’ve probably seen my “Free Kindle Book” posts. I love getting freebies, and I love sharing them.) For two, the list features a number of classics I’ve certainly heard of (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example), but few of them I’ve actually read. (I did get through Vanity Fair in high school but…
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