Avi_The Challenge of Writing a Mystery from Mackin Educational Resources on Vimeo. Thanks to MackinVia for this excerpt from a longer interview I did with them recently. You can view more of Mackin’s videos here. If you haven’t already read my mystery Catch You Later, Traitor, here’s more about the book.
One of my young readers leaned across the table, and intently watched me sign her book. “I love book festivals!” she fairly gushed. “Do you?” The Texas Book Festival was begun twenty years ago by Laura Bush (a former librarian) and at the time, the Governor’s wife. She went on to create the National Book Festival
It is hard enough to complete a first draft. Even more crucial, I think, is your first re-reading of that draft. If you write in any way like I do, that first draft will be full of missteps. You will find events that contradict other events. You will discover elements that are left out (on
The other day I received word from my agent that someone was interested in making a movie out of one of my published books. Is that exciting? Not really. Let me explain. The wheels of movie making—in my experience—move exceedingly slow. The first time I spoke to the person mentioned above was two and a
When writing a novel a good memory is vital. And more than anything else what you must remember is your own work. The character who limps on page six must limp again on page one hundred and fifty, unless you can explain it away. And if you do reference that limp on page six, you
I have written a few ghost novels: Something Upstairs, The Book Without Words, Devil’s Race, plus a few short ghost stories. My readers often ask, “Do you believe in ghosts?” My answer is, “No, but I believe in ghost stories.” (See blog posts for November 15, 2012 and December 11, 2014). Each year I read,
Forester (Aspects of the Novel) famously wrote; “The King died and then the queen died is not a plot. The king died and then the queen died of a broken heart is a plot.” We want to know why and how her heart was broken. Almost all novels have some degree of plot suspense, the
I have just received a galley of my new book, School of the Dead, which will be published next year by HarperCollins. The term galley is a 17th century word, from the French, galée, which, as the OED has it, is “an oblong tray of brass, wood, or zinc, to which the [printer’s] type is
If you are a bibliophile, and I am nothing if not that, one of great places to visit in New York City is the Morgan Library on Madison Avenue and 36th Street. It was built by banking magnate J.P. Morgan (1837–1913) who was also a book collector of vast resources. In this beautiful renaissance style
Avi_The Influence of Playwriting from Mackin Educational Resources on Vimeo. Thanks to MackinVia for this excerpt from a longer interview I did with them recently. You can view more of Mackin’s videos here. If you haven’t already read Catch You Later, Traitor, here’s more about the book. And, in this particular excerpt, I talk about