Writing is mental, and so when your mind is tugged between various concerns, working on that novel becomes difficult. My 90-year-old father-in-law has a serious case of the flu … birthed, he claims, because he got cold when he rode the bus to Champaign to…
I fell in love with Faith Hunter’s words when I discovered my first Jane Yellowrock. Then I bought the next one and the next … I hadn’t considered myself a fan of urban fantasy. Ha! I’d written plenty of fantasy novels, and even penned an…
When The Dead of Night was getting ready to release, I wrote some guest blogs for various sites. One was a Q&A session, and it never ran. BUT, since I took the time to answer all the questions, I figured it should run somewhere, right?…
NANO NANO Yesterday a friend asked me why I participate in Nanowrimo. “You don’t need it,” he said. I have thirty-eight published novels, and I stopped counting the short stories when I hit one hundred. “I need it,” I replied. Because I want to have…
My Cacophonous Mess So they asked what my office looks like. Depends which office. Late spring through early fall my office is my screened-in back porch. I have a big table I found on sale at Wal-Mart, and a comfy desk chair (also on sale).…
When I lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin, I took pottery classes from an amazing instructor who taught out of an equally amazing museum. I made amazingly bad pottery there. Seriously. I crafted a “hand-built” teapot that was crooked and couldn’t pour. And some other ugly dishes.…
In a handful of days my next Piper Blackwell mystery comes out: The Dead of Night. It opens with a character called Mark the Shark. I met all three of him in Quincy, Illinois. My father-in-law lives in a senior apartment complex in Quincy. On…
Christine (C.A.) Verstraete is the author of Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter. Her new novella, The Haunting of Dr. Bowen, A Mystery in Lizzie Borden’s Fall River, offers another view of the Borden murders by providing a glimpse into how the crime could have affected the…
MUSE: a person or force providing inspiration for a creative artist Synonyms: inspiration, creative influence, stimulus, DOG I started out as a fantasy and science fiction writer. Well, actually I started out as a newspaper reporter covering courts, cops, and crime. But when I dove…
