The Burn Patient is a gritty, action-packed L.A. thriller featuring African-American TV reporter, Beatrice Middleton and her photographer partner, Lucy Vega.  It’s the third in the Vega & Middleton series with a fourth scheduled for release in 2021. If you like Rizolli...

KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy readin...

The following general questions can be applied to any mystery novel, and they provide a good starting point for creating your own discussion questions for a given work.

Initial reaction—did you like the book?

What was unique about the setting of the book and how did it e...

Can you describe what your book is about in one sentence?  

When Los Angeles news photographer Lucy Vega’s uncle, a formidable Hispanic businessman, is killed in a car accident in Malibu during a violent el Niño storm, Lucy and reporter-colleague Beatrice Middleton, are...

Supporting women crime writers, $1000 grants to libraries and an opportunity to promote the outstanding, award-winning Colorado Sisters in Crime mysteries and thrillers were among the highlights of the weekend. Not to mention bonding with our sister writers. Kudos to B...

Excerpted from The Writer’s Craft Newsletter

Paid editing and critique services have their advantages, however one of the best things you can do for your writing career is get into a good critique group. You may have to try out a few before you find one that is the righ...

Be afraid, very afraid to jump into writing about characters who are not of your race, sex, age, nationality, experience or ability. But be brave and do it anyway. We all need to be able to get into each other’s heads and empathize deeply. The survival of the world ult...