It’s been over a week since I blogged — lots of things have been going on. Traveling. Writing. Moving my younger daughter into my oldest daughter’s bedroom. I finally have a breather to write this blog. There are plenty of recaps of Thrillerfest on the Internet, I don’t need to rehash it. Suffice it to say it’s my favorite conference for a lot of reasons. Though expensive (it’s in NYC), they have a plethora of panels and workshops for readers and authors of all levels. They have cocktail parties each night, an amazing banquet, and it’s an opportunity for me… Read More

I’m off to Thrillerfest on the Red Eye. Yes, I’m crazy. Yes, I swore I’d never take the Red Eye again. But there were several factors that went into the decision. 1) I refused to spend $70 more for a room because I didn’t reserve Monday night at the conference rate. 2) My daughter who lives in Arizona is leaving Tuesday morning, and I’d like to spend one more day with her. (Of course, we’ll be clearing out her room — she’s taking more stuff to her new townhouse and my making room for my 11 year old to move… Read More

The first time I flew to New York for a conference, I took the red eye. From California to New York, leaving at midnight and landing around six a.m. I thought I was being so smart … saving a night in the hotel, the flight was cheaper, I could sleep on the plane … Not. I was completely dead the next day, I couldn’t check into my room until after twelve noon (meaning no shower, no nap, no downtime at all …) and I never really felt like myself for the rest of the conference. I swore I would never… Read More

Yes, I failed after only one week of promising a writer’s blog on Wednesdays. Why? Because Writer’s Write, and that’s what I was doing last night — writing fiction, not blogs. I had a draft blog for the day about reviews, but I have a lot more to say about that so am saving it for next week 🙂 But this brings up a good point for all of us: writer’s write FIRST. We need to remember that either writing is our career (and we get paid to write and meet deadlines and entertain our readers) or writing is our… Read More

I’m not talking about Frankenstein or Catcher in the Rye, I’m talking about MY old books — books I wrote years ago and am now re-reading. Cringe. I have three side projects going right now. Yeah, I know. But I’m waiting on line edits for COMPULSION and what else do I do? Clean? Ha! The first is taking my first six books and digitally publishing outside of the North American market. I paid to have them scanned (because I don’t have the original edited files anymore — wonder how THAT happened!) and am proofreading them primarily for scanning and formatting… Read More

First, a big THANK YOU to John Clement for being my guest this week. He graciously has agreed to give away two copies of the next Dixie Hemingway mystery! And the winners are … KIRSTEN ROY and WENDY R!!! Congratulations! Please email me allison (at) allisonbrennan (dot) com with your mailing address and I’ll forward the information to John. I’d planned on writing a big wrap-up blog about the RT Book Reviews conference, but so many other authors have posted pictures and stories. So here’s my observations:

I love reading a series. It’s the same reason I prefer television to movies. I like revisiting my favorite characters, finding out what they’re doing, how they’re growing, how they’re going to solve the Next Big Crime. So when I had the opportunity to write the Lucy Kincaid series I jumped at it. I knew from the minute Lucy survived her ordeal in FEAR NO EVIL that I wanted her to be a series character. It wasn’t until I wrote CUTTING EDGE six books later that I started to think that Sean Rogan might be the best man for her…. Read More

Like most writers, I hate my writing process. But, also like most writers, it’s my process and I can’t change it. Before I got serious about writing, I happily wrote “sloppy copy,” the first draft all the way through. Yes, there were lots of errors and I did a lot of revising and editing and cutting and adding. But since I love revising, this wasn’t a problem. The hard part was done — getting the story down from beginning to end. Everything can be fixed. But somewhere along the way, this changed.

In two weeks NOTORIOUS will be available. March 25 is the big day. I am very excited and nervous and scared. Most of you who read my blog know about my history. I have 21 mass market originals, numerous short stories and novellas, and 2 original indie novellas. But NOTORIOUS is my first hardcover. Everything has been different. Even the writing.

One of my favorite workshops to present is on the Villain’s Journey. I took the title from a paragraph in Christopher Vogler’s THE WRITER’S JOURNEY that said, in short, that the villain is the hero of his own journey. When I read that years ago, everything clicked for me. If I always kept that concept in front of me when I wrote, character motivation was clearer. It wasn’t just the villain and the hero who were on a journey, but every other character who crossed their paths.