Category Archives: Paul’s Posts

How to Choose a Bestselling Book Title

Posted on January 4, 2012 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here— The Web is a wacky and wonderful thing. Spend enough time browsing, and you’re bound to come across something weird. A while back, I stumbled across Lulu.com’s Title Scorer, an app that uses algorithms to determine whether the … Continue reading →

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Fire at the Topless Donut Shop

Posted on December 22, 2011 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here— In the novel I’m currently working on I had a character who was a waitress at an unusual eatery. OK, she was a stripper at a topless donut shop. When I sent in the first draft of … Continue reading →

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What Are You Reading?

Posted on December 9, 2011 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here— One of the most common questions I get asked, when someone learns that I’m a novelist, is what books I’ve read recently. Readers like to hear recommendations, and they figure that as an author I should have … Continue reading →

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The White Mittens

Posted on December 6, 2011 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here— My wife and I were having lunch at Morse’s Sauerkraut in Waldoboro recently when we overheard two couples talking in the next booth. The conversation turned to hunting, and inevitably one of the wives brought up the … Continue reading →

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The Murder of Jane Austen

Posted on November 16, 2011 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here— I read it first on Twitter: a writer in England claims to have found evidence in the letters of Jane Austen that the author of Sense and Sensibility and Emma died of arsenic poisoning. Within hours, I saw the … Continue reading →

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The Truth About Editors

Posted on October 31, 2011 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here— There’s an advertisement I see in magazines for Breitling watches that always cracks me up. It shows a picture of John Travolta wearing a bomber jacket and staring manfully out at the reader. The tagline reads: PROFESSION: … Continue reading →

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Barbara Ross: An Ambitious Woman

Posted on October 23, 2011 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here — One of the great pleasures for me of becoming part of Maine Crime Writers was getting to know authors after having read (at best in some cases) a single book of theirs or having met them once … Continue reading →

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Maine Lingo

Posted on October 20, 2011 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here — One of the most difficult decisions an author must make is how to render colloquial speech in dialogue. How do you announce that a character has an accent? Do you do it through diction and the … Continue reading →

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Sherlock Holmes & Jaycee Dugard

Posted on October 7, 2011 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here — I’m a diehard Sherlock Holmes fan. Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the first authors to spark my teenaged imagination, and I don’t think I’ve ever outgrown his singular, hawk-nosed contribution to world literature. I especially … Continue reading →

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How Long Did It Take to Write?

Posted on September 26, 2011 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here — When you do a series of readings, you find that you get asked the same questions over and over. For me, the most common question is, “How long did it take you to write the novel?” … Continue reading →

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