My journey to get my book made into a Netflix series
Wow.Did not expect a book that is basically the minutes of a meeting to be this good. Granted, the meeting is a group of women in a Mennonite colony that are decided whether to leave or stay after discovering that the hurt they felt in the morning was not, in fact, the devil but being… Continue reading Book Review – Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Blurbs, for those of you who might not know, are the quotes you often see on book covers, praising the book in question, the author or previous books. There is a lot of work that goes into getting not just blurbs but the right blurbs, It wouldn't help much to have a Stephen King blurb… Continue reading The First Blurb for WHITESANDS is in!
The rather lovely fellows over at This is Horror just announced the nominees for this year's This is Horror Awards. The categories are numerous and the books and stories are all very worthy. Also, and I think this is rather unusual for an award, they actually give readers a whole month to get their votes… Continue reading This Is Horror – Best Cover Art Nominees (and covers)
There are a few steps to getting a book out into the world. There's the actual writing, which is slow and uninteresting, but then there are fun parts. Bright shiny parts. Like thinking about possible covers. I remember making a cover myself, long ago, in an effort to help myself visualize the fact that one… Continue reading 10 Book Covers That I Really Like (also, homework)
I am going to tell you something about the plan I have for the book I have coming out in September. But first... some background info. I've been working on a book for a few years, on and off. With work and kids and everything else it was a bit of a slog to complete.… Continue reading The New Journey – Day 1
The Girl in the Video is a cyber-stalky horror thriller from This is Horror podcast host Michael David Wilson. I've listened to the This is Horror Podcast for a while and so I knew that the author and podcast host had good taste in horror. The book is about a teacher living in Japan who… Continue reading The Girl in the Video – Michael David Wilson
This is the story of how I turned a flash fiction story written in an hour for a Flash Fiction thing on Chuck Wendig's blog into a week-long writing residency in Exeter in the U.K. Chuck Wendig is the author of numerous books (buy Wonderers and thank me later) but I first encountered him as… Continue reading This is How a Flash Fiction Contest on Chuck Wendig’s Website Got Me a Playwriting Gig and Then a Writing Residency in England.
I'm a massive Raymond Chandler fanboy, though I only started reading him recently. And here's an example that shows exactly why I'm a massive Chandler fanboy. Half an hour and three or four cigarettes later a door opened behind Miss Fromsett's desk and two men came out backwards laughing. A third man held the door… Continue reading Just Raymond Chandler Describing a Man
I asked you about your favorite books on Twitter recently, and got more responses than I anticipated. About 955, as it turns out. https://twitter.com/johannthors/status/1161231619568676865?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Here are the books that were mentioned most often (including quite a few that surprised me.) The Phantom TollboothEast of Eden & Grapes of WrathTo Kill a MockingbirdHouse of LeavesA Tree… Continue reading These Are Your Favorite Books
I got to spend a week in Exeter this summer, as the International Writer-in-Residence at the Quay Words literary festival. Part of the deal was to give a talk on Icelandic crime writing and at the end of that talk (which I may post here later) I told the audience about the books that most… Continue reading 5 Rather Excellent Noir Crime Books
