Excerpt from Killer Career by Morgan Mandel
This week, I'm doing an excerpt from my romantic suspense, Killer Career, here at Make Mine Mystery, and another on Wednesday at Acme Authors Link. Hope you like them. Here's the first -Six blocks later, on the twelfth floor of her white stone office building, Julie unlocked the darkened door

Warped...
by Ben SmallAs some of you know, I just returned from touring Croatia and a bike tour of parts of Slovenia, Italy and Austria. And of course, my mind turned to murder. I don't recall anybody writing a murder mystery involving a bicycle tour, but why not? Seems to me one could develop a story very Agatha Christie-like on a bike tour.So many methods for the killer to use. He could oil a sharp turn on a downhill switch-back. Or she could reach down and thrust a stick or rod between someone's spokes. Or he/she could bat someone across the bean while passing.Great. Now I'll be thinking about bike-murder all day...Consider this: We had eleven people

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! by Christine Duncan
I was going to do a post on Christmas mysteries to continue my posts on holidays reads that help get me in the mood. Maybe I'll do that for my next post here on MakeMineMystery. But you know what, gang? It's Thanksgiving and although the year has been difficult and the economy has hit all of us hard, I've got a lot to be thankful for. @Jan VerHoeff tweeted a few weeks back about finding one thing a day to be thankful for in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. She suggested using it as a status update. Although I have not always been faithful with posting it as my status, I have been finding that I have a great deal to be grateful for. I've got wha

Finding Time to Write
In these days of ever increasing demands on our time as the holidays arrive, where do we find time to write? By the time I check email, answer the ones that need answering and check the day’s headlines, follow my favorite blogs and get some calls returned….it’s time to do some promo. Need to post on Twitter and Facebook, GoodReads and Linked In, and don’t go looking at other’s pages, if I can resist. In between are household responsibilities and friends, volunteer work and bill-paying. And don’t forget the day job – in my case, editing. You may have a longer commute than I do – from kitchen to office – but I often work outside of “regular” 9 to 5 hour

Getting To The Point... of View by Austin Camacho
Recently I've had a couple of new writers - who were asking my advice - debate with me about the use of point of view in fiction. They didn't change my mind but they did make me realize that I have to be able to defend MY point of view about my CHARACTERS' point of view.Well, I’m pretty sure that most editors and agents still consider POV hopping a pet peeve and a sign that they’re dealing with an untrained newbie. They would say, and I agree, that it's best to pick a POV and stick to it. But I can’t deny that many bestselling authors ignore this rule on a regular basis and still sell lots of books. Should we learn from this and follow their lead into a new set of fiction-