Author Interview: James W. Ziskin

Posted on May 13, 2026 by Gabriela Stiteler

James W. Ziskin (Jim) is an American author known for his award-winning crime fiction, particularly the Ellie Stone mystery series. Jim pursued his passion for languages by studying Romance languages and literature at the University of Pennsylvania. His academic background in linguistics, including a focus on Italian and French, has significantly influenced his writing style and story lines.

Before becoming a full-time writer, Ziskin worked as a photo-news producer and writer in New York City and served as the director of NYU’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. He also spent fifteen years in the Hollywood post-production industry, managing large international operations in subtitling, localization, and visual effects. His international experiences include years living and working in France, Italy, and India. He speaks French and Italian.

Ziskin’s Ellie Stone series, set in the early 1960s, has garnered much critical acclaim. The fourth book, Heart of Stone, won the 2017 Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original and the Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery. His novel Turn to Stone received the 2021 Barry Award for Best Paperback Original and the Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery. Additionally, his novels and short stories have been finalists for the Edgar, Agatha, Lefty, and Sue Grafton Memorial Awards.

I was thrilled to talk to Jim about his latest book, THE PRANK, out on 7/26.

GS: One of the things that I really admire about your writing is how well you develop a setting. You evoke a specific time and place without being overly prescriptive. For THE PRANK, you capture this almost nostalgic town of Hephaestus, NY in the late 1960s. I recently read William Boyle’s SAINT OF THE NARROWS and Megan Abbott’s EL DORADO DRIVE and these stories had a similar, almost tender, approach to setting. It didn’t surprise me when I learned they are both about a time and place deeply personal to the writers. How did you land on Hephaestus in the late 1960s? And the allusion in the name itself isn’t lost on me. 

JWZ: Thank you, Gabi, for the kind words about setting. I try to create compelling locations in my books, and inventing Hephaestus gave me a wonderful opportunity to do just that. By the way, I commissioned a high-school student of mine to draw a map of Hephaestus, and it’s going to be in the book. It’s a wonderful map.

There are so many places in New York State named for European cities, including lots of Greek places. That’s where the name Hephaestus came from. There was already Ithaca, Utica, Syracuse, Troy… So I thought long and hard, searching for a name that hadn’t been used, and I came upon Hephaestus. Unusual, yes, but memorable. And, of course, we can certainly imagine symbolic connections between the Greek armorer of the gods and some elements of my story.

In more general terms, I wanted to write about a small working-class town, the kind of place I know so well from my own childhood. As a writer, however, I find it extremely satisfying to create fictional places, probably for the same reasons I like to make up characters and stories. In so doing, I have a great deal of freedom to paint something new, even if it has to fit inside the real-world limits of a region or timeframe. In the case of THE PRANK, that’s Central New York of the late 1960s. It seems after nine books that I only write novels set in the recent past. I love writing about the 1960s and 1970s, but without relying on some of the more common notions of nostalgia for that era. The sixties weren’t all hippies and druggies enjoying free love. There was middle and lower-middle America, too. That’s what I remember about growing up then and what I wanted to write about in THE PRANK.

GS: Jimmy. Let’s talk about him. You spend about half of the novel in his POV. And, as somebody who spent a great many years working with middle schoolers and who currently has one of my own living with me, you really capture that age. But you also capture something a little dangerous. He’s not a flat character, which is something that I think people really struggle with when they try to write children. Can you tell me a little about Jimmy? How did he change and grow as you worked through the book? 

JWZ: Jimmy is a character I love. But I wouldn’t want to cross him. He’s a sociopath, for sure, but he has an odd sense of responsibility and his own moral code, which is—okay—fairly self-serving. Jimmy is tough, stoical, uncomplaining, and extremely charming. At least as charming as thirteen-year-old boys get. And he can be funny, though sometimes not on purpose. Such as when he reflects on religion and his mother’s death:

Anyways, it was mostly Dad who didn’t want to go to church. And he was right. A fat lot of good God did for Ma, seeing as she passed away at thirty-three from some kind of heart problem. A “genital” condition she was born with, the doctors called it.

Jimmy’s language was fun to write. There’s repetition, bad grammar, some swear words—everything you’d expect from a seventh grader. But he’s also quite able to tell his story competently.

The loss of his mother three years before clearly has had a profound effect on his emotional makeup. And having watched his father care for her throughout her sickness instilled a strong sense of duty in Jimmy, even if he doesn’t feel grief or empathy the way most people do. As for his growth over the course of the story, I don’t want to give away too much, but I will say he becomes more volatile. Scarier and more dangerous, for sure.

GS: The other POV, Patti, is a very well-intended, if somewhat naive teacher. She constantly misreads and underestimates Jimmy, which is definitely something I’ve seen many adults do. Kids are capable of a lot more than we give them credit for. Which POV came more easily, or came first? Were there challenges you faced writing in this almost cat and mouse sort of manner?

JWZ: Jimmy definitely came first. Patti’s an adult, of course, so she could narrate in a style more closely aligned with my own voice. She’s clearly intelligent, but naïve, as you say. She fails to understand just how powerful Jimmy’s attraction to her is. And, of course, she’s tremendously vulnerable due to the tragedy she’s just suffered—the loss of her love in an electrocution accident. Oh, sorry. Did I mention that Jimmy caused the accident that killed Patti’s boyfriend? And she doesn’t know that Jimmy is responsible? No, Patti is ignorant of all that, and she allows Jimmy Steuben into her life to distract her from the crushing grief that’s consuming her. She’s grateful to Jimmy and develops a dangerous dependence on him.

Regarding the challenges of two narrators taking turns telling the same story, I worked hard to keep them in sync. To maintain the suspense and to propel the story forward, it was necessary at times to let one character’s narrative get a little ahead of the other’s. Even if it was only by a couple of hours, it still fractured the chronology a bit. Despite being difficult to manage, that kind of narrative back-and-forth works. It ratchets up the tension for the reader and the characters.

GS: Last year I moderated a panel on theme with some pretty amazing writers. They discussed how there are some thematic threads that seem to pull their stories together. When you reflect on your Ellie Stone series, Bombay Monsoon, and now THE PRANK, do you see any threads emerging? What are they? Why do you think you come back to these ideas?

JWZ: Since THE PRANK is more of a suspense novel or psychological thriller than my Ellie Stone mysteries, it’s bound to be different. Ellie seeks justice and recognition. There are societal issues front and center. Jimmy couldn’t care less about those things. In Bombay Monsoon, Danny Jacobs is ambitious like Ellie, but he’s also foolish at times. Ellie is not.

I think I always include themes like secrets, bad choices, deception, and seduction in my books. And why do I come back to themes like seduction? Because it illustrates human weakness so well. And it gives me as a writer the chance to spice things up with some sex, even if I don’t put the sex on the page.

GS: I love talking to other writers about process. How do your stories come to you? You write long and you write short. How do you know when something is going to be longer or shorter? How do you know who is telling the story?

JWZ: If I knew how to answer this question, Gabi, I’d write a how-to book. As it happens, I don’t know where my stories come from. The only thing I can say with certainty is that I adore writing first-person narrators, especially in my long fiction. That’s probably because I feel it’s better suited to plumb the depths of motivation and desire from the point of view of the person experiencing those things. My short fiction tends to rely more on humor and eccentricity than my novels do. Not sure why that is.

GS: I read your post on Criminal Minds about your journey to writing. From New York to Los Angeles, it sounds like you’ve lived a few lives in one. I’d love to know about how some of your lived experiences creep into the stories you tell. In what ways is your writing personal? In what ways is it escapism?

JWZ: Of course a broad variety of experiences provides raw material for a writer. I’ve lived in New York City, Philadelphia, France, India, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Boston. Wouldn’t trade those years for anything. My time in India—about four years—inspired Bombay Monsoon and gave me countless details that helped make that book ring true and authentic. I also worked in a photo-news agency in New York. That gave me some very useful background on the challenges journalists faced covering news in difficult situations, particularly before the digital age. Things moved much more slowly. Almost quaintly in comparison to today. I’ve spent years studying and speaking foreign languages—French and Italian in particular. My love of languages has dominated and influenced every aspect of my life, including my fiction. And, of course, my teaching career contributed ideas for THE PRANK. No work/life experience is wasted in the writer’s training. And, by the same token, the longer you stick around on this earth, the better equipped you are to write fiction, provided you resist the tragedy of a closed mind.

GS: I’d love to hear a little about what you love most about writing and about what is most challenging for you. 

JWZ: I love having written. Okay, I didn’t coin that phrase. But it is indeed gratifying to have created something from nothing. I can think of no greater joy. That’s why AI holds no interest for me. I want to be a writer, not a prompter.

What’s most challenging for me? I’d say overcoming my sloth. I don’t believe in writer’s block. If I’m not writing, it’s because I’m avoiding it. Just like exercise. I avoid exercise, but I don’t call it exercise block. It’s laziness.

GS: What does the initial W in James W. Ziskin stand for?

JWZ: It’s a secret. Like Rumpelstiltskin. But I insist on using the middle initial professionally Just in case another James Ziskin runs afoul of the law. I want there to be a clear distinction between us.

Jim will be in Portland for the Maine Writer and Publisher Alliance’s Crime Wave and the Noir at the Bar at Bellwether on Friday 5/28 @ 7:00.  More information about both HERE.

THE PRANK. A picture clipped from Playboy magazine, a missing Swiss Army Knife, and a prank gone terribly wrong conspire to make Christmas 1968 a deadly holiday to remember.

“The Holdovers meets The Bad Seed,” THE PRANK features a charming but volatile thirteen-year-old named Jimmy Steuben. He befriends his seventh-grade English teacher, Patti Finch, just days after her boyfriend is killed in an electrocution accident while hanging Christmas lights on his roof. Patti desperately needs respite from her grief, and a chance encounter with Jimmy provides just that. Ignoring the dangers of a potential scandal, the mismatched pair begins spending time together over Christmas break. Patti finds solace in Jimmy’s company; Jimmy discovers desire and infatuation. But what Patti doesn’t know is that it was Jimmy who caused the tragic accident that killed her lover.

You can find more information about Jim HERE or by following his contributions to the Criminal Minds Blog HERE.

Posted in Gabi's Posts | 1 Comment

Dressing it Maine

Posted on May 12, 2026 by John Clark

John Clark considering an aspect of fiction that I find quite intriguing-smells and sounds. Aside from their ability to set or frame a scene in a story, they can do other things like help the reader to sense a mood, or foreshadow what is coming. In this post, I’m focusing on ones I think have a Maine essence.

Let’s start with smells. Have you ever considered the variation in how fog smells. When it rolls in across clam flats, it has a most distinct odor, but in other parts of Maine, it’s a completely different one. If you live on a rockbound part of the seacoast, it’s saltier and has a brisk tang, River fog, particularly in late fall, can waft the subtle scent of decaying leaves, while when it’s anywhere near a paper mill it lends credence to the old Maine adage “It smells like Rumford.”

There are other smells of note. Passing logging and chip trucks bathes one with powerful scents, mostly of pine, fir, and occasionally cedar. One of my favorites is the smell of a blueberry field baking in hot summer sun. It’s not like what a crushed blueberry emits, more like something edging toward combustion. Other natural Maine smells include crushed evergreen needles, particularly cedar, and sweet fern.

Then, there’s the smell of smoke. I grew up in the era of open burning dumps. The cloying blend of plastic, paper, and leftover dregs of household chemicals could be smelled far and wide on a damp day. Smoke from burning wood, whether up a chimney, or from a campfire is comforting to me. I remember one night, waiting for a meteor shower when Beth and I sat on the public dock at Great Moose Pond in Hartland. Someone had an outside fire on the opposite side of the lake, and it was relaxing to watch the smoke drift across the water until we could smell it.

That same smoke smell, when it comes from a burning house, or a forest fire, has just enough difference to trigger a primal sense of unease, reference the gloom of ash particles each of the past few summers, generated by huge, uncontrolled fires in Canada.

Even snow has a smell if you pay attention. It comes from the drier kind and is enhanced by falling temperatures.

Sounds are equally interesting. Let’s begin with Red Sox baseball on radio. I swear that no matter which game you listen to, the crowd noise in the background is the same.

Other sounds that stand out to me include kids playing. It’s a mix of screams, laughter, and excitement. Then there’s the ever-present rumble/rush we hear where we live that emanates from I-95 a couple hundred yards away. It’s punctuated by an occasional and hard to describe sound when a semi, gets too close to the side of the road and hits the rumble strip. Those semis, especially logging trucks, fill the air with a brrrrrrt as they jake-brake to decelerate. That latter sound is particularly noticeable when you’re in the Maine North Woods.

Float planes also have a unique sound, one that, for me, creates an image of it heading to a remote trout pond well away from any road. Two other woodland sounds are the whine of a chainsaw, followed by the crack-thunder as a huge tree falls to the forest floor.

Two more are the lonely sound of a train whistle (we hear them several times a day here in Waterville), and the steady sound of a lobster boat or scalloper as it traverses salt water on its way to or from a fishing trip. One memory from when we lived on Sennebec Hill Farm in Union was how we could hear the train whistle all the way from the depot in Warren on damp days.

If you spend any time in the woods, you’re familiar with a plethora of sounds, scolding jays and red squirrels, crows, the drumming of a partridge, the slap of a beaver’s tail, the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker, and the approaching sounds of an as yet unseen critter. Will it be a squirrel, a deer, or something more unusual. The anticipation is always there.

I offer these scents and sounds as opportunities to set a mood or scene in your work. Sometimes a simple reference to one of these can replace a lot of clunky dialog. Imagine, if you will, a lost victim, terrified and near wits end. They hear the sound of running water. Will it lead them to safety, or expose them to someone/something dangerous and lethal?

I’m curious as to what scents and sounds you might have a preference for that represent real Maine.

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On Listening

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Gabriela Stiteler

I’m going to ask a slightly personal question. One that I’ve been thinking about a lot.

When was the last time you really, deeply listened to somebody else?

Lately, I’ve been doing it a lot. Most recently, I held listening sessions for a wonderful small community in Maine that, like many other communities across the region, is facing significant changes within the next few years.

Change is not always bad.

But it is usually hard.

I asked questions like: What are your hopes and dreams for children in your community? What skills, knowledge, and traits do you believe are important? What are some things your community does really well that you want to continue to invest in? What are some things you believe your community should invest in more?

During these sessions ten to twelve community members took turns responding. I listened, wrote down what I heard, and repeated the themes that emerged. We had a few simple rules. Center children. Phones off and away. And wait your turn in the speaking order.

At the end of my last session, which went thirty minutes over the allotted time, one man hung back. At the beginning of the conversation, he was upset. He felt there was an agenda. One he wasn’t part of. But as he listened to others and as others listened to him, his demeanor changed. He expressed real concerns and shared things in the community he valued. As his tension eased, so did the tenor of the conversation. By the end, the group was joking and laughing together.

As I was packing up my chart paper and getting ready for the long, dark, rainy drive back to Portland, he said, “I feel really good right now. We should do stuff like this more often.”

I left feeling deeply hopeful.

And deeply sad.

The loneliness epidemic that we are grappling with now is not new. Robert Putnam wrote extensively about this in his 2000 book BOWLING ALONE. In it, he chronicled the decline in American community and connectedness.

Fortunately, there are things we can do. They just take effort and attention.

There are a great many studies that show the simple act of listening to other people, when there is a shared community value – like children and learning – has significant benefits that include reduced stress, lowered blood pressure, improved mental health, reduced loneliness, boosted self esteem, and increased empathy.

Listening is a strategy marketing teams and people in leadership have been leveraging for years. Take the 70/30 Rule. To goal is simple. The other person talks 70% of the time. You listen actively, paraphrase, and ask follow-up questions 30% of the time. This strategy prevents you from jumping to solutions before you have an understanding of the real needs and root causes of an issue while building trust and connection.

As a parent, I often employ a strategy I like to call “The Captive Audience.” It’s simple. You sit in the car with your child for a 20-30 minute stretch with no music. No technology. Just you and your kid and the open road. Usually, at around the twelve minute mark, my son will say something. Usually it’s a question. Usually I answer by saying something like, “Hmmm,” (insert long pause here). “That’s a really good question. I have to think about it. What do you think?”

And then we’re off.

So what does listening have to do with writing?

Reading is a way to connect, to feel heard and seen and understood. Good books communicate values, ideas, questions, and characters that help us see the world more clearly. And by extension, help us see ourselves in a new light.

Listening can help writers develop an “inner ear” about cadence and vocabulary. It can allow writers to empathize with characters. It also deepens the ability to integrate subtext and ambiguity.

And then, of course, there is the inspiration.

Every writer has borrowed a snippet of a conversation from a corner store or airport or crowded bar. So if you take nothing else away from this, always be mindful of what you say in public.

You never know if it’ll end up in somebody’s book.

What I’ve got going on

Big news. My story “Beautiful, Dangerous Things” was selected for inclusion in the Best American Mystery and Suspense of 2026 edited by Megan Abbott and Steph Cha.

I just found out about another acceptance to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine for the September/October issue for the second of my Portland PI stories. That brings my run to: “Generous Strike Zone” in AHMM (March/April),  “The Best and Sweetest Things” in EQMM (May/June), “A Well Worn Path” in EQMM (July/August), and “We, the Aging” in AHMM (Sept/Oct).

I was invited to the Edgars in NYC thanks to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award. I had a great time, saw some old friends, and am really very grateful. I wore a fancy red suit and saw some great friends. (Me and Kate Hohl.)

There is nothing quite like seeing Times Square lit up at night with the rain coming down and all sorts of people from all sorts of places brushing shoulders and taking pictures.

Talk soon. Be well. And let me know what’s up with you.

Posted in Gabi's Posts | 16 Comments

Weekend Update: May 9-10, 2026

Posted on May 9, 2026 by kaitlynkathy

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Gabi Stiteler (Monday), John Clark (Tuesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Thursday), and Allison Keeton (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers: Vaughn Hardacker’s newest novel, THE WAR WITHIN, is now available in both eBook and POD (UBL –  https://books2read.com/u/3JdaXK )

 

 

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

 

AND DON’T FORGET! One lucky Maine Crime Writers reader who leaves a comment on the blog this month will win a bundle of books!

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Story Ideas In Everyday Life

Posted on May 8, 2026 by joesouza

Where do you find story ideas? Sometimes I see them develop between the drops during a big rainstorm. I see a couple walking along the boulevard holding an umbrella and laughing, soaked to the bone and eager to get home and take off their clothes to make love.

The white line separating a road opens up a whole new world of possibilities. A hitchhiker traveling across country who gets picked up by a strange man. A truck driver falling asleep and crossing into the opposite lane. A woman who had too much to drink being asked to perform a sobriety test, but she needs to get home to take care of a sick child. A pilot in an emergency situation trying to land his faltering plane on a lone country road.

A man walking down the street and talking to himself gives me lots of ideas. I think about his past when he was a little boy and experienced a traumatic event. The event was so bad that he began to drink and do drugs to ward off his demons. Or he developed a case of schizophrenia after college and tried to self-medicate.

Where do you get your ideas?

I see a couple arguing in the car next to mine and immediately conjure up a scenario whereby the husband cheated on his wife and got caught. She’s threatening to divorce him and he’s doing all he can to make sure she keeps her eyes on the road. He doesn’t want a divorce because he knows his wife will clean him out, but he doesn’t want to stay in the marriage, either. They have three kids and the custody battle would be brutal and expensive. She nearly stops the car and kicks him out, but traffic is too backed-up for that.

A man in a restaurant is arguing with his waiter. Either the food is bad or the service is. The waiter argues that his steak was cooked perfectly and the man disagrees, and wants his money back. The steak cost seventy-five dollars and the man refuses to pay, threatening to leave a terrible review on Yelp if the waiter presses the issue. The owner comes out and tries to make the man happy, arguing with the waiter, but the customer begins to curse out the owner and his restaurant. They go outside and a fight almost breaks out. The cops are called in to settle the situation.

The banana man walks around the street selling bananas, but a few kids steal some bananas from his stack. He shouts at them and drops the bananas, threatening to chase the kids, but then someone else might steal his bananas. So he picks them up and starts hawking them again. An elderly gentleman with a kind heart buys his entire stack, feeling sorry for the man. Then he takes the bananas and hands gives them out to all the homeless people begging for coins.

Where do you find your story?

A would-be magician comes into a shop owners market every day and buys an apple, but before he leaves he makes the shop owner watch one of his silly magic tricks. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. The magician never spends much money in the shop and he takes up much of the owners time with his silly magic tricks. The magician tells him that he’s a retired doctor and the shop owner can tell that the man is lonely and wanting of attention, but the magician is a bit of a narcissist and always needs attention. One day he interrupts the owner during a big sale and insists that the owner and his customer stop what they are doing and watch him perform his trick. And that day he didn’t even buy anything. The owner loses his temper and throws him out.

I guess the point here is that story ideas come from everywhere and anywhere. From observation of daily life to listening in on a conversation at a coffee shop. If you’re a writer, you too can find stories in every aspect of life.

So where do you find yours?

All the best,

Joe

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Everything Old Is New Again

Posted on May 7, 2026 by kaitcarson

By Kait Carson

Have you been following the news about AI developments? Do you use AI in your work? Is AI part of your pantheon of creativity?

My answers are simple. Yes, sort of, and no.

The sort of pertains to my use of ProWritingAid for spelling and comma assistance. I switched schools in the fourth grade, and the change from phonics to rote spelling methods meant no word ever looked properly spelled again. As for commas, I tried. I really tried. ProWritingAid is one hundred percent responsible for my editors retaining their hair.

As for writers who dump their completed manuscripts into Claude or ChatGPT, or any other AI program for a preliminary edit, I can only shake my head in disbelief. These are the same programs that participated in wholesale pirating of published works, copyright notwithstanding. What in heaven’s name makes you think they’re no longer harvesting your words (a/k/a training) simply because they’re being forced to pony up damages? That seems naïve, but your mileage and tolerance limits may vary, and I’ve been told the developmental and line edits are exceptional. They should be. They’ve used outstanding models for their frame of reference.

Nor do I understand why authors would use AI to ‘write’ novels. Part of the joy of being a novelist is manipulating words, crafting them and then polishing them until they shine, holding them to the light and watching the rainbow prism they emit cover your laptop. Publishers are requesting authors affirmatively state if they used AI to produce their manuscripts, but there is no reliable ‘test’ and the system is honor-based. AI may produce technically perfect words and punctuation, but it can’t reproduce nuances or the author’s heart. At least not yet.

Wikipedia license free

As a member of the Baby Boomer generation, my distrust of AI may be traceable to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and HAL the computer. That didn’t end well as I recall, and Keir Dullea was so cute. Not fair. It may also seem that the movie had provided a glimpse into the future.

Last month, The New York Times and other publications carried stories about a new AI model, Mythos. Anthropic, the company responsible for Mythos’ development, paused the rollout citing cybersecurity concerns. Mythos, it seems, is excellent at finding and exploiting software ‘bugs.’ It also seems it’s capable of exploiting these bugs on its own. While the company has paused the rollout, the story left open the possibility that the model might ignore the pause. Interesting concept.

If that’s the case, how can authors, or anyone, protect themselves from the insatiable appetite of AI? In the spirit of everything old becoming new again, we might want to consider taking a page from our past and penning our stories with….pen and ink. Come to think of it, that would also resolve the question of AI as an author. At least until robots learn cursive, followed by pounding away at manual typewriters. Right, not much of a leap. It’s a brave new world, and a scary one.

Posted in Kait's posts | 8 Comments

THE SLIDE I LOVE

Posted on May 5, 2026 by jselbo

 

THE SLIDE I LOVE

Jule Selbo

When the mystery starts to unravel and the  ‘getting to the reasons, the persons, the end’ of the story is within reach this image comes to mind. I am perched on top of the playground slide and now I must push off, wind through the final curves and reach the bottom (hopefully landing on my feet and not awkwardly on my rump in the dirt). It’s an exhilarating  and daunting feeling.

Well, at least for me.

I stop using excuses to avoid my computer – like ‘I have to shop and cook for my family’ or ‘I gotta get a haircut’ or ‘gotta watch the end of this tv show’ or ‘I gotta do research for my brother regarding his trip to the Galapagos’ or ‘I must dust or sweep’ or ‘must search out bread that does go bad, bread that will mold, so I know I’m not eating bad preservatives and other additives’….

When I’ve climbed up the slide and am at the top and the only way down is in front of me, I wake up with a new excitement – I know it’s gonna be tough-going, but at least I know there’s a single exit to where I am going.

For my Dee Rommel thriller series, it usually means a big action sequence. I am wrapping up 6 DAYS (fifth in the series).

Sometimes I wish I was writing a screenplay.  During my years in Hollywood, I was told over and over that the ‘big action sequences’ could be/should be written like this: Crazy action push and pull in (pick location) that includes cars, trucks, planes and ends inside (location) finally with a face to face confrontation…

Of course, I would write it a bit more eloquently and more exciting-ly for the characters of the story – but the specific delineating kicks and slaps and head-on collisions and blood spurting etc. that prose writers need to describe – I didn’t have to write them because the director/producer wouldn’t make fight scene decisions until the exact location was chosen. Then the fight coordinator would design the fight/action sequence in that location and it would be his/hers (writer be damned).

I am being too general here, of course screenwriters suggest culverts and dams breaking and rushing waters or the bad guy getting skewered on a hook in a butcher’s freezer, but again – the precise movements – the kicks and slaps and turns and ducking and blood gushes etc. are not appreciated – or needed.

We novelists don’t have fight coordinators to design our action scenes.  But IMO, we should still keep brevity in mind: It is rarely important if the protagonist or antagonists uses their right hand or left leg or spins to the right or left or sucker punches two inches below the solar plexus or twists a specific elbow (you get it). We can get lost getting TOO specific. Pacing is important. Too many tiny details slow stories and trajectory down. Let the reader fill in a lot of the blanks, they have “a camera going in their heads”. IMO, keep the emotions going, keep the stakes high, know who has the upper hand at what point – and keep it potent, and relatively short.  IMO, action scenes with too many physical turns or trips that go on and on are usually SKIMMED by the reader and if you are (as in IMO, a writer should) using the climax as a final reveal of plot or motivation – don’t get bogged in specifics of body movements in a fight.

I am ready to push off the top the playground slide. It’s the climax, the story is moving towards a huge confrontation. So, I am writing this to remind myself to get to the bottom  – to enjoy the curves of the slide, but to pass through them with some alacrity and continue on at a good pace – and, hopefully,  land on my feet.

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Adventures in Research

Posted on May 4, 2026 by mainecrimewriters

Lucy Zahray, The Poison Lady who educates crime writers

We’re in merry old England this week, so this is a revised version of an earlier post.

Kate Flora: The reading community we write for is an informed and demanding one, so we all have to do research for our books. Because I write police procedurals and about real crime, some of my research tends to be quite dark. I was looking for a reference book on my shelf recently, and scanning the contents reminded me that a stranger, knowing little about me and what I do, might be taken aback by my collection. I’m the person who goes to a library book sale and is delighted to score a criminalistics textbook. I read an article in a recent New Yorker and immediately ordered a book about geographic profiling, only to find that I already have David Canter’s Mapping Murder on my shelf. Every book I write has research files, and I have a file of old New Yorker articles on fascinating subjects like using soil to track where a killer has been.

Tess Garritsen, Lea and Kate perform an “autopsy” on Jerry Healy

Sometimes these books are things I read out of curiosity; sometimes, they related to the actual work I’m doing. For example, when I was working with retired Portland, Maine deputy chief Joe Loughlin on a book about Amy St. Laurent’s murder, Finding Amy, there was trial testimony from a forensic entomologist about the fly larvae found with the buried body. I had recently read M. Lee Goff’s A Fly for the Prosecution, so I had a great reference for helping me illuminate the expert’s testimony. Also very helpful in writing the scenes about the forensic exhumation was an entire notebook about the process put together for me by a police detective down in Delaware. He created it for a fictional mystery that’s never been published, but it was waiting for me when I needed it for a real crime.

Other books on the shelves have come to me through conversations while I’m doing

Chris Roerden, whose book Don’t Murder Your Mystery, is a great one for writers

research. Sometimes I have a conversation with a detective, and order up a book he suggests. That happened when a detective in the Miramichi, New Brunswick police department was walking me through the slides he uses to teach interviewing technique at the police academy. Our conversation led me to Mark McClish’s book, I Know You Are Lying: Detecting Deception Through Statement Analysis. Listening to the small language choices the interviewee makes can be very illuminating, as in the moment when the suspected killer in my true crime, Death Dealer, speaks about his missing wife in the past tense.

Once, after a conversation with a Portland detective about interviewing technique, I ran into my local police chief. He asked what I was working on, and I told him about the detective and some of the things he’d told me. “It’s all flavor of the month,” he said. “I’ll send you a book.” A few hours later, a patrol car stopped and the officer handed me a wonderfully informal, and informative self-published book by a Rochester, NY detective, Lt. Albert Joseph, Jr, called We Get Confessions.

 After reading Gavin DeBecker’s The Gift of Fear, I found myself late one night sitting in a jail up in New Brunswick, waiting to do a ride-along, and discussing the book with another officer. It, and the companion book, Fearless, are great books about trusting instinct and learning to be safe and resilient.

Because I write with, and about cops, in my Joe Burgess police procedural series and in my nonfiction, I have an entire shelf about cops. One of the great books is Mark Baker’s Cops, another Adam Plantinga’s 400 Things Cops Know. Another, not for the faint of heart but worth getting from the library, is Practical Homicide Investigation. (A note about that: when I got it from interlibrary loan, a concerned librarian asked if I really wanted to read it before handing it over.) For anyone interested in police shootings in the cops’ own words, I co-wrote, with retired Deputy Chief Joseph Loughlin the book Shots Fired: The misunderstandings, misconceptions, and myths about police shootings.

There are books about the criminal mind, crime scene investigation, and methods of murder. Sometimes, I carry my enthusiasm too far. Once, while I was cooking for a dinner party, my husband suggested that having a book about plant poisons open on the counter when the guests arrived might not be a good idea. I did end up using poison in An Educated Death. Another time, invited by a library in New Hampshire to talk about “The Dark Side of Crime Writing,” I had happily embarked on a talk about dissection of the liver before I realized that readers might not really to need to know all that goes into making the sausage to enjoy it. I’d learned a lot about the liver during a walk on a Florida beach when we encountered a toxicologist. He was enthusiastic. I ended up using that conversation in my Joe Burgess book Redemption.

I never imagined myself sitting in a restaurant talking about dissection with a medical examiner, but yes, I’ve done that, too.

I wonder—are your bookshelves as dark as mine? What are your go-to books for crime writing? And what are your favorite research stories?

Maine native and recovering attorney Kate Clark Flora writes true crime, strong women, thrillers and suspense, short stories, and police procedurals. Her fascination with people’s bad behavior began in the Maine attorney general’s office chasing deadbeat dads and protecting battered children. In addition to her crime fiction, she’s written two true crimes and a memoir with a retired game warden. Most recently Shots Fired: The Misconceptions, Misunderstandings and Myths About Police-Involved Shootings, co-written with former Portland assistant chief Joseph Loughlin. Flora has been an Edgar, Derringer, Agatha and Anthony finalist and twice won the Maine literary award for crime fiction.

 

Reminder: Each month, someone who leaves a comment on one of our posts will win a bundle of books. You could be our May winner.

 

 

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Weekend Update: May 2-3, 2026

Posted on May 2, 2026 by kaitlynkathy

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kate Flora (Monday), Jule Selbo (Tuesday), Kait Carson (Thursday), and Joe Souza (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

 

 

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

 

AND DON’T FORGET! One lucky Maine Crime Writers reader who leaves a comment on the blog this month will win a bundle of books!

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The Lost Art of Letter Writing

Posted on May 1, 2026 by kaitlynkathy

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here. Back in 2017 I wrote a post here at Maine Crime Writers titled “Friends Around the World” about the many pen pals I had as a girl and the fact that letter-writing has gone out of style in this century (if not before). Some things available today promote more communication. Cyberspace provides a connection to friends and strangers alike and e-mail and messaging allow relationships to develop on a more personal level. We can even talk face-to-face using cameras built into PCs, laptops, phones, iPads, and other devices.

Back in the 1950s and early 1960s the options were pretty much limited to talking on the telephone or writing letters. I’m not sure how I acquired my first pen pal, but I know there were pen pal sections in many publications, printing names and addresses of people looking for people to write to in other countries. One of those publications was a comic book I read regularly about a young model named Katy Keene. I wrote to one of the addresses in the pen pal section, possibly in Australia, and in time a letter came back. The person who originally advertised for a pen pal had done so several years earlier and was now quite a bit older than I was but she passed my letter on to a younger friend and I corresponded with that girl for a number of years afterward.

Looking back, memory faulty and the actual letters long gone, I don’t know what I wrote to various pen pals or, for the most part, what they wrote to me. I hope I didn’t inadvertently insult anyone. Certainly there were cultural differences that surprised me. My pen pal in Singapore, Vivien Yeo, wrote to tell me of her marriage . . . at thirteen. It was arranged by her parents. Hannelore Weiss, in Germany, sent me picture postcards . . . of buildings my father knew from first-hand experience had been bombed during World War II. Then there was Sonoko Mitsufuji (I think that’s the correct spelling but I won’t swear to it) from Japan. Her much older brother paid a visit to the U.S. during the time we were corresponding and stayed with us. My father took him to a Rotary Club meeting.

I wish I still had those letters. If any of them sent me photos of themselves, those are long gone too. Sadly, so are most of their names. If I could remember more, given today’s technology, I might be able to reconnect with a few of my pen pals. There was Heather. Was she from Australia or New Zealand? I had a pen pal in each country. There was Carole from Bristol, England. I thought of her the first time I visited Great Britain at age twenty, but by then I’d already forgotten her last name and street address. My pen pal in India was a boy. He asked me to trace my feet and send the tracing to him. Nothing kinky. A few months later he sent me a pair of shoes and I sent back a photo of me wearing them.

In college and after I exchanged regular letters with family, in particular my parents and grandfather. Later we kept in touch with college and Navy friends by exchanging annual Christmas letters. That, too, has gone by the wayside. For one thing, I realized that mine ended up being the same letter with different book titles to reflect the current year’s work. We lead very dull lives.

I love getting newsy letters (or e-mails) but these days I have a hard time thinking of anything to write back. I have one friend who sends e-cards for every possible occasion. I like knowing she’s still around but for some reason receiving these always makes me feel guilty that I don’t do a better job of keeping in touch.

So, a question for those of you reading this: do you still write letters (or e-mails) to friends and/or family, or has that form of communication been replaced by shorter forms like posting on Facebook and Messenger? Inquiring minds want to know.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.

 

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