Oyinkan Braithwaite’s breathtaking novel, My Sister, the Serial Killer was published last November (Doubleday, 2018) and while the title caught my attention I picked it up because again and again I heard someone call it their favorite book of the…
We all know that unrepentantly evil characters are the most fun to write. But how do you make a psychopath memorable, and more than just the tired one-dimensional shock value trope of airport novels? Make them a literary psychopath: a…
Julia Fine’s debut novel What Should Be Wild, (Harper, 2018) is a modern gothic fairy tale, animated with toppled tropes and dark, unexpected secrets. The novel follows Maisie, a young girl cursed with the power to give and take life…
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…
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…
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…