Stephen Lawrence Brayton's Blog – April 2012 Archive (5)

Iowa has turned cloudy and cold. Spring can't settle in properly. So, today, I picked this week's featured author and we transport to Local Grown, a coffee house at the end of the wharf in Coupeville, Washington, which juts out into Penn Cove…

Katherine Hinkson, a writer friend, and I both agree editing is probably the worst tribulation about writing a manuscript. Certainly, it is the most tedious and frustrating. One of the reasons is because we are constantly finding mistakes, even after the third, fifteenth, and fiftieth read through. Then, when the publisher’s editor(s) get a hold of it, they’re finding even more. Plus, they’re coming back and mentioning not just the fundamental errors (grammar, spelling, punctuation), they’re…

As the rain pours today after a week of cold temps, and seeing this is Friday the 13th, I'm looking for a little Irish luck (and possibly an Irish lass to stroll by) as I pick up this week's featured author, William Doonan, and we transport to Kilronan which is on the Aron Islands of the west coast of Ireland. We're sitting in teh pub of a bed-and-breakfast Mr. Doonan…

Near the end of August 2011, I attended the Killer Nashville writers’ conference. This was my third year and this time, besides meeting some wonderful people, authors, readers, and fans, I was honored to be invited to sit on a discussion panel. The seminar dealt with the subject of writing combat scenes.

For a moment I felt touch of an inferiority complex because the other three gentlemen on the panel had accumulated between them about 90 years of experience in the military…

By George Pelecanos

http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/features/georgepelecanos/

Plot

Ex Marine and Iraq vet Spero Lucas works as an investigator for a Washington, D.C. defense attorney. He also has a sideline business finding lost items for people. Drug runner Anwan…