Excerpts from both Doha 12 and South are featured in Murder U.S.A., a new anthology of excerpts from new and established mystery/thriller authors now available free wherever ebooks are sold. In Washington, D.C., an image on the screen of a cell phone connects a nationwide terror threat with an unknown anthrax…
Publishing the Second Time Around Part 2, on Murder Lab
The Murder Lab blog just put up the missing second part of The Second Time Around, my accounting of what the second-time publishing experience was like for me. Some things changed, some didn’t, and as in life, it wasn’t always the right things that changed or stayed the same. Last…
Publishing the Second Time Around, on Murder Lab
The Murder Lab blog just put up Part 1 of The Second Time Around, my accounting of what the second-time publishing experience was like for me. Some things changed, some didn’t, and as in life, it wasn’t always the right things that changed or stayed the same. If you’re interested…
Kristen Elise: Making Science Thrilling
[Note: this is a departure for me in two ways. One, I rarely write about writing. Second, the Burrow’s never hosted a guest writer before. But Kristen Elise, author of The Vesuvius Isotope, has done something I signally failed to do in three attempts: write a thriller that involves science….
Criminal Element: Addicted to Addicted Detectives
Once more, I’m consorting with the Criminal Element. This installment is a think piece about why so many literary detectives are addicts. Crime fiction is cheerfully described as an addiction by many of its fans, including such diverse personalities as Sigmund Freud and Woodrow Wilson. Just as neurochemical addicts have…
Criminal Element: What’s in Your Museum?
I’m back among the Criminal Element again, this time with a story about antiquities smuggling: Our story begins with a pot and a pig. In 1970, an Italian man working on a canal near Naples discovered a remarkable piece of crockery: a 27-inch-tall, double-handled chalice or krater, black with red…
Criminal Element: The al-Mabhouh Caper, and a Book Giveaway
Doha 12 is inspired by a real-life incident: Mossad’s 2010 assassination in Dubai of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. I’ve written a summary of this operation and its fallout for the good folks at Criminal Element, and now it’s available for your delectation. As an added incentive to check it out,…
Real Intelligence: A CIA Analyst Critiques Zero Dark Thirty
How close to reality is Zero Dark Thirty? The Pacific Standard online magazine ran on 16 January an article written by Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst and targeteer, in which she compares the hunting-bin-Laden movie to her own work in the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center, and then with the Zarqawi…
Intelligence vs. Spies
spy (spi) NOUN: pl. spies (spiz) An agent employed by a state to obtain secret information, especially of a military nature, concerning its potential or actual enemies. One employed by a company to obtain confidential information about its competitors. One who secretly keeps watch on another or others. (American Heritage…
How Do You Find New Books?
I just finished writing a business plan for Wombat Group Media – all thirty pages of it. It’s essentially an outline for how I’d go about self-publishing Doha 12 and perhaps other books I write. I haven’t finally decided yet whether to make that leap, but that I spent several…