Plot Twist! Secrets, Lies, and Expectations.
- February 25, 2021
- Keenan Powell

If Jed Mercurio is a pantser, I’m a red herring.
Read MoreThe Mighty Pen
- February 24, 2021
- Emilya Naymark

A couple of years ago, back when we could do such things, I went to see a band at a Brooklyn nightspot. In performing what I thought would be a cursory rummage through my bag, the bouncers found my pens. All two dozen or so of them.
Read MoreHIDE IN PLACE – the new novel by Emilya Naymark
- February 23, 2021
- Tracee de Hahn

She left the NYPD in the firestorm of a high-profile case gone horribly wrong. Three years later, the ghosts of her past roar back to terrifying life.
When NYPD undercover cop Laney Bird’s cover is blown in a racketeering case against the Russian mob, she flees the city with her troubled son, Alfie. Now, three years later, she’s found the perfect haven in Sylvan, a charming town in upstate New York.
But then the unthinkable happens: her boy vanishes.
Read MoreCelebrate Black History Month with Black Mystery Authors
- February 22, 2021
- Alexia Gordon

The history of Black American crime fiction dates back to the 1930s
Read MoreEat, Drink, and be Literary
- February 19, 2021
- C. Michele Dorsey

Welcome to By the Book, Miss Demeanors’ style. In the tradition of the New York Times Sunday feature, the question of the week is: You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three authors, dead or alive, do you invite, in addition to your fellow Miss Demeanors, of course?
Read MoreInspiration: Kent Haruf
- February 18, 2021
- Susan Breen

There’s nothing I love more than an inspirational story, and one of my favorites involves Kent Haruf.
Read MoreLength Matters: How Many Words Does It Take?
- February 17, 2021
- Connie Berry

How long is a sentence? The answer I got in junior high school was “long enough to finish the thought.” Cheeky.
For years, the longest sentence ever written in English was said to be Molly Bloom’s 3,687-word soliloquy in the James Joyce novel Ulysses (1922). However, one of the finalists for the 2019 Booker Prize was Lucy Ellman, whose 1,000-page Ducks, Newburyport consists mostly of a single sentence that runs to 426,000 words. Beat that if you can.
Read MoreInspirations from the Past
- February 16, 2021
- Keenan Powell

I recently finished writing a historical inspired, in part, by my family’s immigration story.
After joining ancestry.com, I met cousins from that line and in 2015, and I had the chance to visit. One of my questions was why when so many Irish ended up in Canada, or Boston, or New York City, did this family end up in the Berkshires?
Read MoreThe Worst-case Scenario
- February 15, 2021
- Emilya Naymark

Reading about horrible things help us deal with them IRL.
From ancient myths to fairy tales to epic poems and literature of every era and genre, it’s the worst-case scenario that glues us to the page/stage/screen. We shudder and close our eyes trying to imagine what it’s like to go into battle or to lose someone we love. The story takes us by the hand and lets us live through the tension and fear, then lets us out at the end, still whole, our lives still intact.
Read MoreWelcome Keenan Powell
- February 12, 2021
- Tracee de Hahn

Welcome Keenan. Not only are you a crime writer, you’ve had a multi faceted professional life ranging from an illustration in the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons to your law career. Is there a thread that binds these together?
I believe the short answer is there is a subterranean current tying all of these together: The desire to create an image or story that resembles what I see in my head. The mediums have morphed with the materials and education available to me but the urge is the same.
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