ARCs of If I Should Die are available by email.
Welcome to another week of Writerly Round-Up (March 10 – 16)
Crime Scene is a site that has been around since the dawn of the Internet
This is a New Case
The Stranger Danger Case
What happened?
On February 20, 2016, Vanessa Pruitt returned to her home after a few days out of town.
She discovered her husband and another person she didn’t know apparently shot to death in the basement rec room of the house.
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Tips to Help Your Fictional Cop’s World Come Alive
Does your latest tall tale feature a beginning, middle, and end? How about characters, setting, and dialog? Have you been really creative and inserted lots of sentences composed of various words with various meanings?
If you answered yes to each of the above questions, well, you’ve taken the appropriate first steps toward accurately writing about cops, crime, and crooks.
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Build Book Buzz
Sandra Beckwith
Quick tip for selling more books on Pinterest
I’ve noticed that a lot of authors are making a big mistake with their book-related pins on Pinterest. The good news is that it can be fixed very easily.
I’ve created a super short video (one minute!) for you today that shows you how to fix the problem so your pins are helping you sell more books. It’s truly as easy as one, two, three!
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From Flo Stanton a Writer’s Chatroom Regular
Publishing A Book? 10 Questions A Publisher Will Ask You
7) Is Your Book Unique?
When your submission comes in to a publisher, the first thing they want to know is:
- “Why should I publish yours rather than someone else’s.“
- “What is its uniqueness?“
- “What does it have that no other article or book on the subject has?”
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Balancing the Three Key Elements of Story
- If I want to build tension or suspense, I work on people’s reactions to something that is planned, going to happen, suspected of happening. I might use dialogue with a lot of subtext to hint that something’s not right and it’s affecting somebody.
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The Author’s Three-Step Test for Sellability
Marketing 101
The basic principles for selling products are the same no matter what, and the reason is because the buying process is a function of human psychology. In marketing, we define the buying process via a funnel. It is the same for buying a book or buying a refrigerator. Even though the process of moving people through that funnel has changed over the years due to how people gather information, the funnel is still a staple in marketing. A basic understanding of the buying process is the bedrock of step three.
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The Writer’s Forensics Blog
FORENSIC COMMENTS FOR WRITERS FROM D. P. LYLE, MD
Diatoms: Microscopic Clues of Death By Drowning
What are diatoms? How do they help the Medical Examiner determine that a death was from drowning?
Determining that someone has drowned is not as easy as it might seem. The finding of water in the lungs isn’t enough. Sure drowning victims most often have water-filled lungs but if a corpse is tossed into a body of water, the lungs will often passively fill as the water replaces the trapped air in the airways and lung tissue. However, if the ME finds inhaled debris such as plant and water-born insects, etc. deep in the lungs, this suggests that the victim was breathing at the time they entered the water and inhaled the debris-filled water. But this isn’t always found.
So a method for determining drowning is needed. Diatoms might help. Though controversial and definitely not universally accepted as a sign of drowning, this search for diatoms is an interesting forensic science technique. And this search is not in the lungs, but rather in the bone marrow.
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Thanks for dropping by for my Writerly Round-Up. I’ll get back to you next week with a whole new batch of links.
Don’t touch anything sharp!
ARCs of If I Should Die are available by email.