Watching characters grow and change over the course of a series can be as much fun for the writer as for the reader. In my case, though, the fun part applies only to secondary characters. My protagonists, veterinarian Rachel Goddard and Deputy Tom Bridger, have to suffer through grim and dangerous events in order to [...] Read More →
Author Archives: Sandra Parshall
How do you spell that?
You’d think signing books for readers would be the best part of the writing life, the payoff for all those hours spent alone at the computer, searching for the elusive right words to tell a story. Now here the story is between covers, with your name on it, and the people who walk up to [...] Read More →
The End
“The first chapter sells the book. And the last chapter sells the next book.” –Mickey Spillane The End. No other part of the crime novels I read disappoints me as often as the ending. No other part of the books I write makes me crazy the way the ending does.
Psst! Want a hot deal on a book with bad words in it?
by Sandra Parshall You know those sidewalk peddlers who try to make you believe they’re selling you a real Rolex for twenty bucks? Sometimes I think a writer selling books is the literary equivalent. Sure, you’re offering people something in exchange for their money, and you think it’s something valuable, but you have to persuade [...] Read More →
Screeching to a Halt on a Manicured Lawn
There it was, in the middle of a beautifully-written book I’d been enjoying. The heroine hears a noise on the floor above and starts up the steps to investigate. When she reaches the top, something rushes toward her out of nowhere and slams into her, she feels a blinding pain in her head… “then all [...] Read More →
Mysterious Weather
It was a dark and stormy night. Laugh, if you must, at this classic example of bad writing, but I sort of like it. For me, nothing creates atmosphere as effectively as weather. I always appreciate a writer who knows how to use the natural world to enhance a novel, and I’m disappointed when a [...] Read More →
We are what we write?
by Sandra Parshall I once opened a copy of Writer’s Digest and saw this header on the editor’s column: You Are What You Write. Now there’s a scary thought. Makes me very glad Thomas Harris doesn’t live next door. But is it true? If someone writes about murder, intrigue and deceit, what does that say [...] Read More →
Angry Birds and the Thirst for Revenge
Angry Birds is the Millennium Trilogy of video games, the perfect time-waster for those of us – that would be most of us – who are so fed up with the state of the world that we’d like to hit somebody or something. Unlike Lisbeth Salander, who takes us along as spectators on her quest [...] Read More →
Small towns can be murder
by Sandra Parshall My husband and I have a running argument about crime in small communities. He doesn’t think it’s realistic for a sparsely populated place to have regular outbreaks of murder and mayhem. But he’s never lived in a small town or county. I have, and I don’t even raise an eyebrow at the [...] Read More →
One phobia down, a dozen to go
by Sandra Parshall Recently I realized that one of my worst fears has vanished. But how could a phobia that gave me so many stomach-churning, sweaty-palmed moments simply go away? In the months before my first book was published, I lived in a state of constant terror at the thought of everything I would have [...] Read More →