How the Pied Piper of Tucson Led Me to My Story
When I started my YA thriller Half in Love with Death, I’d already abandoned two novels about a young girl who falls in love with a man who may be a murderer. Every time I tried to write it I…
Category: Literary Thriller
All-Points Bulletin: Finding the Missing Scene
The crime is elusive. Despite the clues — a character transformation not quite earned, too hasty of a consequence — most of us are quick to dismiss the evidence. A writer is often the last person to realize that a…
Dead Book Walking
I’m writing a book that will probably never get published. Not because it’s a bad book, necessarily, though it may be, but because it’s a book about people trying to escape the kind of broken country we might end up…
Sharing an Inspiration with Joyce Carol Oates
When I set out to write a novel inspired by the case of Charles Schmid, the “Pied Piper of Tucson,” I knew from the start that I was not the only writer to find a story in this case.
Books Coming to a T Stop Near You
One of the only things I miss about my nine-to-five job is all the reading I got done riding on the T. There’s something magical about reading while commuting and it’s not surprising that programs, like Boston’s Books on the T,…
Comic relief
As the wheels of our plane hit the tarmac, the woman sitting next to me lost her grip on the powered-down cell phone she’d been clinging to throughout the flight. It landed with a soft thunk on the thin carpet…