Weekend Update: December 13-14, 2025

Posted on December 13, 2025 by kaitlynkathy

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Allison Keeton (Thursday) and Matt Cost (Friday), with a Writing Tip from Kate on Wednesday.

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.

Don’t forget! One lucky Maine Crime Writers reader who leaves a comment on the blog this month will win a bag of books!

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

Posted in Sunday Updates | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Producing and Publishing the Audiobook of Raven, Part 1

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Robert T. Kelley

Rob Kelley here, talking this month (and next!) about producing and publishing the Audible audiobook edition of Raven.

Because my contract with High Frequency Press allowed me to keep my audio rights, I had the choice of whether, and how, to produce an audiobook. If they’d kept the rights or I was agented, we might have shopped it around to shops like Trantor Media who will pick up a project and create an audiobook. In that case I might get a very small advance and some royalties. But this was something I wanted to have control over so I went a different route.

It’s a pretty detailed process, so I’m going to break this blog posting into two parts: Part 1 (December 2025) will cover the setup decisions and the process of selecting voice talent to narrate the work. Part 2 (January 2026) will cover the collaboration between myself and my voice actor partner to make the audiobook and send it out into the world.

Setup

Amazon/Audible has created a service called ACX, the Audiobook Creation Exchange. Once you have a Kindle ebook posted (even if it’s still forthcoming) and you can prove you are the “rights holder,” you can claim your title and start the process of creating your project. You have a number of decisions to make about how the audiobook will be sold, how it will be made, and how you might pay your audiobook producer.

Distribution

You have two distribution models you can choose from. If you select exclusive distribution for your audiobook, you will get a 40% royalty from sales on Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books. If you select non-exclusive distribution, you can sell your audiobook through other channels in addition to Audible/Amazon/Apple, including independent ones like Libro.fm  and get a 25% royalty. I went with exclusive for this project.

Deciding How to Produce Your Audiobook

Now you need to create your audio! You can record it yourself if you have those skills, but it will need to meet certain audio quality standards to be accepted by ACX. I’ve talked to authors who have done this, and they tell me that it’s pretty grueling if you’re not used to that kind of voice work. And it’s a lot of work, taking between 5-7 hours of work to produce one finished hour. Since I don’t have those skills or that equipment, and as I have a female main character, I wanted to find a professional a female narrator for the book.

So I chose to work with a “producer,” a professional voice actor who would narrate my book. In order to do that, you upload 3-5 minutes of text, about 2-3 double spaced pages that will serve as an audition. Since this book ultimately has 6 different points of view, I chose small snippets of internal monologue and dialogue to help me judge whether they could differentiate between characters in dialogue exchanges, giving them unique voices that translated my prose into performance.

At this step you have another set of decisions to make. How will you pay your producer partner? You have three choices.

1) Pay for Production, in which you pay a flat fee per hour that the finished audiobook runs. For reference, ACX estimates that most producers can narrate 9300 words per hour. Raven is 80,000 words so the finished book was estimated to run 8.6 hours. Per-finished-hour (“PFH”) rates run from $100 to $1000 for professional actors. If you choose PFH you give the producers auditioning a sense of what PFH rate you’re willing to pay.

2) Royalty Share, in which the producer splits royalties with you only when the book actually sells.

3) Royalty Plus, in which you pay some PFH then take a little more than the producer on the subsequent royalty split.

After doing my research, I went with Pay for Production. Yes, that was expensive. But everything I read said that as a debut author without an audiobook sales track record, I’d have a very difficult time attracting quality talent.

Auditions

ACX then lets you open up auditions for your book. This part was pretty cool. Every day for about 10 days I’d get a few new auditions, some from folks early in their career as a producer, some with more experience. Those voice actors who had done a large number of ACX projects had a badge letting me know they had produced a lot of audiobooks. I received over 40 auditions during my open call, and got some really great auditions.

Two things stood out. First, there was a pretty wide range of quality. Some were very professionally recorded, clearly volume mastered and produced in a studio (most of the professionals have home studios they’ve set up), while some sounded like they were recorded on an iPhone. I got a few bids from producers who would bring a cast, dividing up the male- and female-voiced characters. Those, no surprise, were often very expensive.

Second, was whether I wanted any special accents. At my own peril, I let them know that a few characters in the book would have Boston accents, specifically Southie. Here’s the thing about actors doing Boston accents: if you didn’t grow up in Boston, you’re very unlikely to pull it off, and a bad Boston accent is like fingernails on a chalkboard. So I got some whoppers.

In the end, I found several narrators I liked, and then made them offers with my proposed PFH rate and the timeline in which I’d like to complete the book. I was extraordinarily lucky to have my offer accepted by the very talented and extraordinarily professional Nicole Fikes.

Next month I’ll finish the story, describing the process of collaborating with Nicole to produce the book and launch it into the world!

Currently reading: The Proving Ground: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel, Michael Connelly, 2025

Next in my TBR list: The Emergency: A Novel, George Packer, 2025

 

 

Finally, a reminder that once again, in December, one lucky Maine Crime Writers reader who leaves a comment on the blog will win a bag of books!

Posted in Rob's Posts | 12 Comments

Traditions

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Gabriela Stiteler

Hi All —

Gabi here.

My younger son (9) was learning about traditions in school, which has prompted all sorts of memories. I am working on a longer manuscript, it’s funny the way some of these details work their way into stories.

***

Growing up, December and early January were always a busy. Both my brother and I have December birthdays, and my father’s is in early January. We celebrated Christmas two times – once with extended family and once with immediate family. Then we celebrated Three Kings Day thanks to my Mexican heritage, and Russian Orthodox Christmas thanks to my Slovakian heritage. I would put my shoes out and collect chocolate coins and small gifts. For Russian Orthodox Christmas, we’d drive through the mountains to Winder and go to a church service that was in a language that was not English. We would eat pirogies that my aunties made — prune, sauerkraut, potato — and they would send us home with bags of leftovers to be frozen and enjoyed later.

I am very proud of my coal-mining Slovakian relatives, who came to this country with very little. When my grandfather, who lived with Alzheimer’s for a long time, died, it was the language of his childhood that he reverted to. He would sing songs to himself that his mother once sang to him.

I am also very proud of my Mexican relatives, who were born to tell stories and play cards and fold newspapers into toy boats, and to watch old westerns while we ate vanilla ice cream with salted peanuts and, when I got older, sipped tequila. My Abuelita is ninety-seven. The other day, she called me on my birthday and sang “Las Mañanitas.” I let it go to voicemail because there are very few things in this world better than hearing your grandmother sing to you on your birthday and I’d like to make sure I have it for years to come.

I come from a large family and traditions cannot be separated from family coming together. I am grateful for the time I had with my aunties and uncles and grandparents. I am grateful for the time I continue to have here, on this earth, and in this moment. I am grateful for my old and new friends. I am grateful for my loved ones near and far.

It is a gratitude I feel in my bones.

What a gift this all is.

If you are up for sharing, I’d love to hear about your traditions – ones you still celebrate and ones that have slipped away.

See you in 2026,

-Gabi

Posted in Gabi's Posts | 12 Comments

Writing Tip Wednesday: Reverse Outlining

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Robert T. Kelley

Rob Kelley here, at the end of a revision cycle for a manuscript due to my publisher in January. This is the book Critical State, which is now planned as the first in a series of at least three books featuring the journalist protagonist Olivia Wolfe. This book will release in fall 2026 (and the next two in 2027 and 2028, respectively, which seems far away until you owe a manuscript!).

My publisher (High Frequency Press) had some heavy edit suggestions to the draft of the novel they’d seen a few months back, which meant I needed to rethink some major plot points. That resulted in adding three characters and deleting one, and replacing two POV characters with two others. Pretty big changes that required some major surgery. So, how do you do that and not have it end like the classic kid’s game Operation where if you touch the sides of the “wound” you lose, or in this case just end up with an editorial mess. Or a dead patient/book.

Reverse Outlining to the rescue! I’m more of a plotter in the plotter vs. pantser dichotomy. Were I a full-on pantser, I’d absolutely need to do a reverse outline at this stage. I’d have a huge mountain of prose from which I’d need to extract a throughline, identify arcs for characters, plots, and subplots, then take that pile of prose and fit it into a logical model.

But as more of a plotter, I only had to do half a reverses outline, taking my original outline and revising it to match my new goals. For those sections of the book that needed to be rewritten, I needed new outline points that addressed: 1) what had to happen in what order to make the plot work,  2) what characters would move that plot forward, and 3) whose POV would the resulting scenes be in?

I knew how the book had to end, and the big beats that needed to be hit, so I could insert placeholders that said something like: Riley needs to confront her superiors in the White House. Things X, Y, and Z happen. And this will be in Riley’s POV.

I use Scrivener to write my drafts, not moving to Word until I’m copyediting. I color code each scene by whose POV it is in, so I can move scenes around and consider rewriting a scene in a different POV if it gives it more punch (I just did that to a scene this week!)

Here you can see what my manuscript looks like in Scrivener, each scene named in the sidebar. (I don’t hold on to the chapter titles in the final manuscript but give them titles when I’m drafting so I know what goes there. Plus it’s fun.) If you squint hard enough you can also see that I use a three act structure with a midpoint as a large scale framework to help me think about character and plot progression and velocity.

Because I do it this way, when Riley character showed up, I knew what she had to do, and when she had to do it. I was able to use Scrivener to help me re-outline the book, then begin filling in where I needed new prose. Some things were changed by who Riley is and how she interacts with other characters, but those I fix when I get there.

More from me on Friday when I’ll be sharing my experience in producing the audiobook of Raven!

And a reminder that once again, in December, one lucky Maine Crime Writers reader who leaves a comment on the blog will win a bag of books!

Posted in Rob's Posts | 4 Comments

The Joys of Christmas for Writers

Posted on December 9, 2025 by joesouza

The Christmas season is a reminder that hope and joy can triumph over the evils going on in the world, and in our own hearts. I say this as someone who writes books about mystery and murder, and who often questions his own motives for writing about such uncouth topics. Can the two be reconciled?

I’ve said many times that crime writers are often the nicest people I’ve ever met, and I often wondered why that is. A lot of crime writers have had careers in law enforcement, or social service agencies. These are people who have seen evil close-up and personal, and who have dedicated their lives to keep the rest of us safe from murderers and predators. For this reason, I believe crime writers write in order to show how justice can prevail over chaos and lawlessness. The criminal usually gets his or her comeuppance by the end of the novel, and sees the error of their ways. Lawfulness and good wins out at the end.

Christmas time is about giving and about expressing goodwill to the people around you. Writers give of themselves fully when they publish books. Their stories come from deep within in them, and emanate from the heart. In many ways, it’s the greatest gift they can give to others, most they don’t even know. Their stories are parables to do good and to treat others as they would want to be treated. A lot of the time, these stories are redemption tales. Also messages about the pitfalls breaking the rules that society has created for us.

I’m grateful to my family and friends during this Christmas season, especially my writer friends, and for being born in such a wonderful country that allows us to express our views. I’m grateful that I have the freedom to write the kinds of stories I want, and that I have an amazing publisher that puts them out into the world. Loving our neighbors should be all consuming priority and we should spread such a message of joy and goodwill throughout the year. The state of the world is in rough place right now, but I’m not without optimism. Hopefully someday, most crimes will be a thing of the past and only in crime fiction will we be able to experience such evil.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and holiday season with their friends and family. Oh, and my new novel, CRUEL TO BE KIND, will make a wonderful gift for you or any of your crime reading friends and family.

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

WINTER IS HERE/ KEEP THE “TO-DO” LIST IN PLACE

Posted on December 8, 2025 by jselbo

by Jule Selbo

Saturday, at The Great Lost Bear: Great moments.  Six of us had headed out in our coats and scarves and arrived to  sip liquid libations and eat chips in one of Portland’s most warm and cozy hangouts. We shared thoughts on writing, movies, cops throwing snowballs,  new books coming out,  publishers, writers having serious discussions with their publishers about deadlines, kids, short stories, Lee Child, Crime Bake, Crime Wave, Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime Conference and other conferences, the “real” definition of cozy and more.  Gabi Stiteler organized it and it was a great two hours. Ryan was the “new guy”, he’s a South Portlander and he’s got his first crime/mystery/heist book coming out in August –  it sounds fabulous. Totally reminded me of Matt Cost’s blog a few weeks ago – he noted that he felt so great once he met the crime/mystery writers in New England. That the connections are solid.

As it gets colder and snowier and daylight hours are shorter, I know I have to keep my “to-do” list active and stick to what I’ve set out to do.  What about you?  As the temperature descends, how much time is dedicated to writing/seeing other people to talk about writing, going to writing events and keeping engaged? (Talking to your dog about writing on those cold winter walks does count, as long as your dog is positive and telling you to get that story done!)

Here are some things to add to your to-do list:

Hope you can put this on your calendar.  JANUARY 12.  7:30 pm.  A fabulous night at Portland Stage (on Forest Avenue). Anita Stewart, the Artistic Director, always wants to support Maine Writers – and here is how it goes: Excellent Portland Stage actors (directed by Todd Backus) bring crimes mystery books to “life” in wonderful and fun  readings. This will be the fourth in the reading series they have asked me to help curate. The “genre” of the books that are brought to life depends on the play that is being presented – and it’s CRIME/MYSTERY again (designed to go along with Portland Stage’s Lend Me A Tenor (a comedy mystery play by Ken Ludwig) .

The authors whose work will be presented this winter are: Travis Kennedy (White Python Mystery Tour) Matt Cost (Mainely Mayhem) Kate Flora (Such a Good Man) and an excerpt from my 7 Days. MORE INFORMATION ON THE LINK BELOW:

https://www.portlandstage.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/events/a0SPa00000TJpZBMA1

Also in these cold months, we want to announce a new project:

Mark Winkworth, podcaster and audio book narrator (Tales of the Sea https://www.talesofthesea.com and Bubbles Goes Round https://www.amazon.com/Bubbles-Goes-Round-Fantastic-Journey and more) is looking for short crime mystery stories for his new podcast. He will find the voice actors if you writers don’t want to read their own work, produce, edit and get them out onto the waves  “wherever you listen to your podcasts” (including Spotify etc etc.) You, the author retains all rights, of course.

We’ll be looking for stories under 5,000 words. Flash fiction is welcome.Already published stories are fine/great. Please include with submission where the story has been published and Mark will make sure the outlet is mentioned in the introduction.

If you’re interested in hearing your short story “come to life” on the air, with professional voice actors doing the honors, stayed tuned.

 Submissions will be open soon and we’ll be sharing details on how to submit.  I am going to be working on this, along with Gabriela Stiteler and Ginny Lee. Perfect winter project – looking forward to reading a lot of great short stories.

Oh – and here’s the cover of THRILLER MAGAZINE that was just released a few days ago.  I’m excited to have a short in it!  It’s called “Tri-County Fair Pageant”.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS everyone!

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Weekend Update: December 6-7, 2025

Posted on December 6, 2025 by kaitlynkathy

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Jule Selbo (Monday), Joe Souza (Tuesday), Gabi Stiteler (Thursday) and Rob Kelley (Friday), with a Writing Tip from Rob on Wednesday.

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

From Kathy Lynn Emerson: All of my e-books are on sale this month at Smashwords. That includes all the titles in the Face Down and Mistress Jaffrey Mystery series, the Face Down Collections (the same titles in omnibus editions),  the omnibus edition of the four Diana Spaulding 1888 Mysteries, the romance collections, the children’s books, the non-fiction (including How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries), and my two most recent rewrites of historical novels originally published in the early 1990s, Death of an Intelligence Gatherer and Dangerous Visions. Everything is half price. Now is your chance to stock up on your winter’s reading! Titles written under my pseudonyms are not included, but everything else is.

Matt Cost will be at the Bangor Book Festival on December 13th with over ninety other authors. Come check it out at the Bangor Public Library from 10-3:30. Write on!

The winner of our November bag of books is Dana Green.

Every Christmas, Kate Flora writers a holiday story for everyone. There will be a new story posted soon. Those from past years are on her website www.kateclarkflora.com

And a reminder that once again, in December, one lucky reader who leaves a comment on the blog will win a bag of books.

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

Posted in Sunday Updates | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Double Header

Posted on December 5, 2025 by John Clark

John Clark checking in for the month where darkness causes grown men to tremble. There’s more truth in that statement than most might realize. Once hunting season is in the rear view mirror, and there’s insufficient ice to fish through, many middle aged and older guys are faced with more dark hours than light. Fancy light bulbs and football games on big screen TVs only go so far in alleviating this prevalent, but seldom discussed problem.

Fortunately, I don’t suffer from this. I had to skip hunting thanks to balance issues, and one football game a week (The Pats of course) is an adequate fix for me. Reading and immersion in an extremely challenging computer game-Elden Ring, keep me mentally stable, or as stable as my devious mind allows.

I have slowed down on reading as well as reviewing books, a product of the aging process I suspect, but will still hit 150 books by the end of the year. Two I read recently stand out, but for completely different reasons. Both are young adult, the genre I still prefer most of the time.

Wish You Were Her by Elle McNicoll, Wednesday Books 2025, is unique in that both main characters are autistic. Allegra is eighteen and her growing fame as an actress is becoming too much. She decides to take a summer off and stay in the remote town of Lake Pristine. Her father runs a book shop there and is very involved in a literary festival which is the highlight of the season.

Jonah works for her father and his neurodivergence helps him keep the shop running by creating displays, marking off orders as they come in, and being extremely knowledgeable about many books. He expects to work there forever.

Their connection begins innocently enough when she sends an email to his shop account, inquiring about what the summer in town is like, but does not identify herself. When they meet, Jonah is verbally hostile because his immediate attraction to her is completely unfamiliar territory. Allegra is puzzled and hurt by this seeming to come out of nowhere attitude. Meanwhile they continue emailing each other, neither realizing who is receiving what they send.

Add in that Allegra mistakenly believes it’s the other young man in the shop who sends them, there is jealousy among the local girls, reporters from the tabloids are stalking her, and everyone’s growing worry about the festival failing when the biggest author pulls ou.

Watching the two young people ever so slowly realize what was hostility really was navigating unfamiliar territory, coupled with additional supporting townspeople, and a very satisfying conclusion make this a dandy read. It’s also a very accurate portrayal of how neurodiverse people face a world like ours and we sure as hell need more of this kind of fiction.

How Girls Are Made by Mindy McGinnis, Harper 2025, came out last month and I immediately ordered a copy. Mindy is an author I never fail to read. This time, she has written a book that the word unsettling barely begins to describe.

It opens thusly: “Spring begins with a funeral. High heels sink into wet earth, dragging their owners closer to the dead.”

Readers soon realize that one of the three girls who comprise the main characters has died. Is it Fallon? Is it Shelby? Is it Jobie? The story line is woven so deftly I didn’t figure out who died until it happened. Fallon is a type A worrier who freaks when she realizes her younger sister has no clue about sex. Shelby is a tough girl who fights, hoping to get a contract with a line of athletic ware and go pro, but gets her nose broken by her boyfriend when she confronts him at school for sending nude pictures to another girl. Jobie is Fallon’s long time friend, but worries almost constantly about being irrelevant.

When Fallon decides she needs to do something about her sister’s ignorance and realizes just how many teens of both sexes have little or misinformation, she starts a group at the local community center under the guise of it being a self defense club. Shelby and Jobie join in and before anyone realizes how out of control it will get, they’ve added an anonymous online forum that they believe is hack proof since they’re running it through a VPN.

Meanwhile, Shelby is slowly being reeled in by a new boy at school who is a master manipulator and has her beyond confused as well as losing her self-confidence.

Jobie is on her way down a different rabbit hole when she’s enticed to join a sketchy online group.

The book takes readers through the three girls’ experiences as they’re pulled into some of the worst realities teen girls face these days. Mindy doesn’t sugar coat any of what happens, leaving the reader cringing time after time as each of the three main characters heads toward personal disaster. It’s NOT a book for the faint of heart, but reflects just how dark and evil today’s world can be for unwary teens regardless of gender.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Gratitude

Posted on December 4, 2025 by Brenda Buchanan

I love it when my turn to blog straddles the November and December holidays. Though it’s dark early and cold often, this time of year puts me in a grateful mood, something to celebrate in these times. It’s easier to ignore the grim headlines and focus on the hopeful ones when I’m in a thankful headspace.

Sunrise at Allen Cove

We spent last weekend in Brooklin, our longtime summer place, which has in recent years also become our Thanksgiving place. It’s intensely quiet in November, and beautiful beyond words. I can spend a whole day mediating on the ever-changing view of the light on the sea, watching for ducks and loons, observing the tide flood in and slip out. And in between, reading good books.

Here are some photos that reflect that beautiful rhythm, some of them of the same places at different times of day, because the view differs by the hour, and I can never make up my mind which I cherish the most.

Mid-afternoon at Allen Cove

An hour later – approaching sunset – at Allen Cove

Naskeag Point on a sunny afternoon. I love how the sea floor looks like a moonscape when the tide is out.

Seaweed of many colors

The hills of Acadia from a distance

Eastern Beach in the early afternoon.

Eastern Beach in the late afternoon shadows

In addition to feeling grateful for the beauty we get to experience on a regular basis here in Maine, I’m grateful for my writing friends who take my breath away with their fine prose, for the people who read my stories, for the editors who make my work better, and for all of you who read and comment on this blog.

Our community is strong and rich and wondrous.  Thank you for making it so, and happy holidays to all of you.

Brenda Buchanan sets her novels in and around Portland. Her three-book Joe Gale series features a contemporary newspaper reporter with old-school style who covers the courts and crime beat at the fictional Portland Daily Chronicle. Brenda’s most recent short story, “Cape Jewell” was published in Snakeberry: Best New England Crime Stories 2025. Her short story, “Means, Motive, and Opportunity,” appeared in the anthology Bloodroot: Best New England Crime Stories 2021 and received an honorable mention in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022. Her story Assumptions Can Get You Killed was published in Wolfsbane: Best New England Crime Stories 2023. 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Writing Tip Wednesday: Be Yourself by Matt Cost

Posted on December 3, 2025 by matthewcost

Writing, like life, comes with a whole host of rules. And like life rules, writing rules are often no more than recommendations. My advice? Be yourself. Know the rules, use the ones that work for you, and discard the ones that don’t.

Best tip for writers: not to listen to any silly tips for writers. ~~Joyce Carol Oates

Some of the most famous writers of all time were big time rule breakers. James Joyce’s style was a stream of consciousness with complex symbolism that somehow resounded with readers. William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy use only a handful of punctuation marks. Gillian Flynn writes unlikeable female protagonists.

It seems that these writers have done okay for themselves. To be honest, Flynn is the only one that I like.

One of my favorite pieces of advice comes from Elmore Leonard. I tend to have a short attention span in my reading, so I try to propel my writing along at a good clip. At the same time, I realize that there are people that enjoy a seven-page description of a vase. To each their own.

Try to leave out the parts that people tend to skip over. ~~Elmore Leonard

 

 

I am not a big fan of Anne Rice books but plenty of people are! Still, I do like her advice and take it to heart.

I don’t think there are any universal rules. I really don’t. We each make our own rules, and we stick to our rules, and we abide by them, but you know rules are made to be broken. … [If] any rule you hear from one writer doesn’t work for you, disregard it completely. Break it. Do what you want to do. I have my own rules that I follow, but they’re not necessarily going to work for other writers. … The only universal rule is to write. Get it done, and do what works for you. There’s nothing sadder than someone sitting there and trying to apply a lot of rules that are not turning that person on and are not stimulating and are not making a novel. ~~Anne Rice

One of my favorite dead writers is Ernest Hemingway but I don’t like the following piece of advice.

When I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing you were writing before you could go on with it the next day. … I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. ~~Ernest Hemingway

 I write until I’m done and then take a dog walk or lie sleepless in bed plotting out what is going to happen next. That way, when I sit down, I am ready to go again. What does Hemingway know?

Stephen King suggests that you should write every day and I firmly believe that to be true. Especially if the intention is to write a book. Everybody should be able to carve at least twenty minutes a day for writing. But again, there are people that like to write in spurts and gallops and then take a break.

What do I know?

Write. Write on.

About the Author

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published six books in the Mainely Mystery series, starting with Mainely Power. He has also published six books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, starting with Wolfe Trap. There are two books in the Brooklyn 8 Ballo series, starting with Velma Gone Awry. For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed began a new series this past April. Glow Trap is his eighteenth published book.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. They have been replaced in the home with four dogs. Cost now spends his days at the computer, writing.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments