Category Archives: Writing

Inappropriate Character Flaw or Nervous Habit

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True confession time. I have a horrible nervous habit — reaction? — when someone falls. I’ve struggled with it my entire life, but try as I might, I can’t change my behavior. Believe me, I’ve tried.

What is this awful flaw?

Let me preface this by saying, I feel all the correct emotions, hoping the person who fell is not seriously hurt, didn’t break a bone, or worse. I’m deeply concerned about their wellbeing — I really am — but the uncontrollable laughter that wells from deep inside me counteracts any genuine feelings I try to convey. It’s terrible for the person who fell. It’s even worse for me, because it’s not an accurate portrayal for how I feel in the moment. But I can’t stop laughing.

How would you handle a character with a flaw like mine?

Readers would hate an MC who laughs when someone falls. It’s so inappropriate, many wouldn’t care how the character felt inside. Even my mother had a difficult time dealing with my nervous habit, especially since I’m a very even, calm, happy-go-lucky person. Not an overly serious one, though. Which may be part of the problem. If we don’t laugh, we cry, right? Perhaps it’s a survival instinct.

Hmm…

Or maybe, it’s because of my lighthearted nature that when something shocks me like a fall, it throws me into a mental tailspin. Uncontrollable belly-laughter is the result. The worst part? The more I love the person, the harder I laugh. For a long time, I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. Only a sadist would laugh at a time like this.

Since this happened again recently — thankfully, the loved one who fell has the same flaw — it drove me to find answers.

On Quora, someone asked the question, “Why can’t I control my laughter when someone falls?”

A psychology student responded:

“Laughter is a parasympathetic response which calms the nervous system down and often occurs in situations of relief (people engage in nervous laughter to try to calm themself down). The laughter can force you to engage in rapid diaphramatic breathing (belly laughing), which stimulates other parts of the parasympathic nervous system, creating a calming effect.”

Ah-ha! It’s an empathetic response. I felt somewhat better, but I needed more. So, I dug deeper and found an article in Scientific American entitled, Why Do We Laugh When Someone Falls?

William F. Fry, a psychiatrist and laughter researcher at Stanford University, explained:

EVERY HUMAN develops a sense of humor, and everyone’s taste is slightly different. But certain fundamental aspects of humor help explain why a misstep may elicit laughter.

The first requirement is the “play frame,” which puts a real-life event in a nonserious context and allows for an atypical psychological reaction. Play frames explain why most people will not find it comical if someone falls from a 10-story building and dies: in this instance, the falling person’s distress hinders the establishment of the nonserious context. But if a woman casually walking down the street trips and flails hopelessly as she stumbles to the ground, the play frame may be established, and an observer may find the event amusing.

Exactly! I would never laugh if someone fell from a 10-story building and died. Strangely, I also don’t laugh if animals or the elderly fall. My brain must deem that more serious. Everyone else is fair game. Including me, by the way. All it takes is one little smirk from an onlooker and I die laughing.

Another crucial characteristic is incongruity, which can be seen in the improbable or inconsistent relation between the “punch line” and the “body” of a joke or experience. Falls are incongruent in the normal course of life in that they are unexpected. So despite our innate empathetic reaction—you poor fellow!—our incongruity instinct may be more powerful. Provided that the fall event establishes a play frame, mirth will likely ensue.

And you thought I was a terrible person. Shame on you. 😉

Play frames and incongruity are psychological concepts; only recently has neurobiology caught up with them. In the early 1990s the discovery of mirror neurons led to a new way to understand the incongruity aspect of humor.

When we fall down, we thrash about as we reach out to catch ourselves. Neu­rons in our brain control these movements. But when we observe another person stumbling, some of our own neurons fire as if we were the person doing the flailing—these mirror neurons are duplicating the patterns of activity in the falling person’s brain.

My hypothesis regarding the relevance of this mechanism for humor behavior is that the observer’s brain is “tickled” by that neurological “ghost.” The observer experiences an unconscious stimulation from that ghost, reinforcing the incongruity perception.

Thank you, Doctor! Still, it’d be a tough flaw to give a character. The only way to handle it would be to show how awful the character felt about laughing. Even then, I don’t know if it’s enough.

What do you think? Is all inappropriate behavior a tough sell, or does it make the character more relatable?

For the brave souls among us, do you have a similar flaw? What is one thing you’d change about yourself if you could?

This Ain’t Your Grandaddy’s Western

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Good morning to you all!

Today’s post is a little different than usual. The link below will take you to Saddlebag Dispatches Magazine and an article I co-wrote with Roan and Weatherford publisher, Casey Cowan. He called me one day several months ago and asked if I’d work with him on an article about westerns and their survival as viable genre. Of course I jumped at the chance.

We reached out to other authors such as Marc Cameron, Craig Johnson, and the creator of Rambo, David Morrell who are writing modern westerns today, bringing in different viewpoints about these books that once entertained, and eventually brought many authors into the writing world.

This is the result.

Enjoy!

https://issuu.com/oghmacreative/docs/saddlebag_dispatches-january_2026/s/152135644

P.S.

Here’s the link to the entire January issue of this fine magazine, where you can find an in-depth interview with David Morrell, fascinating articles on the new and old west, and my ongoing column, along and much, much more.

https://issuu.com/…/docs/saddlebag_dispatches-january_2026

Show Up: The Discipline of Writing

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When I first started writing way back in the dark ages, even before the internet was dial-up…What’s dial-up, you ask? For readers who aren’t familiar with the term, back in the late nineties when you connected to the internet, first you heard a dial tone, then a series of screeching, beeps, and static as the modem connected to the ISP that might go on forever while the user sat there waiting and waiting for everything to connect…

Oh, and this was before Word, so everything was DOS…and even before that, it was an electric typewriter, and before that, a manual one (that’s what I started on), and the only critique groups were—gasp—in person. Only in my corner of the world, there were no critique groups. I wrote and wrote and kept getting rejections because I made the same mistakes over and over because there was no one to tell me what I was doing wrong.

Writing was hard. It took a lot of discipline to show up and keep going.

Let me tell you a little secret. Writing is still hard, even with all the shortcuts and conveniences we have. Need to research gunrunning? Instead of getting in the car and driving to the library and looking through the card catalogue for books or articles on the subject, just put your research question in Giggle, I mean Google, and instantly there are hundreds of articles on gun running at your fingertips. Off you go on a rabbit trail. Not only that, there are a gazillion books on writing.

When I started, I had a handful of books from my local library, and probably the best thing I could’ve had—the Writers Digest Magazine featuring a monthly column by Lawrence Block. Each installment felt like a masterclass in creative writing. Here’s a link to one of his columns—columns he wrote every month for fourteen years–talk about discipline! Later came Nancy Kress and then our own James Scott Bell.

However, books and articles don’t teach discipline, and in MHO, discipline is the difference between wanting to write and actually writing. Here’s my definition of discipline: Showing up and doing the hard work when you don’t feel like it.

I’ve known writers who love to talk about writing and who love to have written, but when it comes to actually sitting behind a computer and actually putting something on paper, they are MIA. Unfortunately, no one can give you the discipline to write. Only you can do that, and if you don’t have a deadline, either from a publisher or a self-imposed one, it’s hard to make yourself sit at the computer and run (or plod) toward the finish line unless you have that drive to create a story and put what’s in your head on paper.

So TKZers, what advice do you have on developing discipline? And if I don’t show up to answer comments, then you’ll know the ice storm brought down the power lines in my area…

Amazon’s Latest Rollout – And Controversy

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Amazon’s Latest Rollout – And Controversy
Terry Odell

Amazon is rolling out a new feature, “Ask this Book,” a new feature that allows readers (of Kindle books) to interact with the book. It’s currently available for thousands of English-language books on the Kindle iOS app in the U.S. The feature will be enabled on Kindle devices and Android OS next year.

Forget a character’s name? Can’t remember where a scene took place? Instead of searching, which can be a tedious process, you can now ask the AI genie inside the book and it will answer you, also inside the book. No scrolling, no losing your place.

That seems harmless enough. Helpful, even. But you can also ask more general questions, and AI will answer in a paragraph, and that’s where the controversy begins.

This example is from a Kindlepreneur article written by Kevin J. Duncan, Head of Content. Using the book “Alice in Wonderland,” he asked what was the role of the Cheshire Cat.

The response:

The argument continues that these sorts of answers are the “opinions” of AI. To quote Duncan, “the system is giving you its version of what that thing means. It decides what matters, what doesn’t, what’s central, and what can be glossed over.”

My own test. I don’t own a Kindle, and I buy almost all my books from Barnes & Noble, but I do have a few books from Amazon, admittedly. Most of them are the freebies that come with my Prime membership, with occasional purchases from authors I’m familiar with. I didn’t have access to the Ask This Book feature when I opened a book from my Kindle library to read on my PC, but I did get the feature on my phone.

(Personal note. Reading on my phone is a last resort. I have a Nook tablet and an iPad mini, both of which are much more eye-friendly, but sometimes I’m stuck waiting unexpectedly and don’t have one of those devices with me.)

The Ask This Book feature is activated by tapping the page and getting a menu of icons at top of the screen. Ask This Book is the diamond shape with the little +.

Or, you can highlight a word or portion of text, which should give you the option to ask your question.

You can also choose between having AI look at the whole book, or only up to as far as you’ve read, which is supposed to avoid spoilers. I used the whole book option and asked the question, “What kind of person is Mike Romeo.”

This is the response I got. (Sorry, but my phone wouldn’t let me shrink the text to get the entire answer on the screen, but you can probably figure out the first sentence.)

**If you’re reading this, JSB, what do you think about this characterization summary?

The Author’s Guild is pushing back. This is what they had to say:

“The Guild is looking into whether the feature, which was added without permission from publishers or authors, might infringe authors’ and publishers’ rights.

“Ask this Book, which is slated for a wider rollout in 2026, allows readers to query an AI chatbot about books they have purchased or borrowed. So far there is no way for publishers or authors to opt their books out of the feature, though as of this writing the feature is not available for all ebooks. It allows a reader to highlight text and click on an “Ask” icon to ask the AI to “explain” the selected text or enter their own question in the chatbot. All responses are generated from the book itself.

“The Guild is concerned that Ask this Book turns books into searchable, interactive products akin to enhanced ebooks or annotated editions—a new format for which rights should be specifically negotiated—and, given Amazon’s stronghold on ebook retail, it could usurp the burgeoning licensing market for interactive AI-enabled ebooks and audiobooks.”

Writer Beware isn’t too happy about the feature, either. They say, “Agents and publishers broadly regard anything to do with generative AI as a separate right reserved solely to the author, and publishing contracts are increasingly addressing this issue. The primary focus has been on preventing unpermissioned AI training, but with the technology embedding itself at warp speed in all aspects of the book business, the rights implications are expanding just as fast…especially where, as here, they sneak in under the radar.”

Should this be considered yet another format of a book? If so, what are the author’s rights?

As of now, there is no opt-out choice. Ask This Book is included automatically. It operates independently of the author, so they don’t get to review answers, suggest changes, or flag problems.

Your thoughts, TKZers? Are authors and publishers getting shortchanged?

**Note: if you’re upset with Amazon, my books are available wide.

New! Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Deadly Ambitions
Peace in Mapleton doesn’t last. Police Chief Gordon Hepler is already juggling a bitter ex-mayoral candidate who refuses to accept election results and a new council member determined to cut police department’s funding.
Meanwhile, Angie’s long-delayed diner remodel uncovers an old journal, sparking her curiosity about the girl who wrote it. But as she digs for answers, is she uncovering more than she bargained for?
Now, Gordon must untangle political maneuvering, personal grudges, and hidden agendas before danger closes in on the people he loves most.
Deadly Ambitions delivers small-town intrigue, political tension, and page-turning suspense rooted in both history and today’s ambitions.

 

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

Celebrating Public Domain Day – Part 2

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Montage of 1929 Works

by Debbie Burke

Y’know what they say about great minds?

Well, Kay DiBianca and I independently had the same idea this week: Public Domain Day 2026.

When I went to schedule my post, I noticed Kay had already scheduled hers. So we put our great minds together and decided that1930 was such an exceptional year for books, films, and music, there was enough to cover without duplicating each other.

So here is Part 2 featuring music and recordings.

George and Ira Gershwin published four great tunes:  I Got Rhythm, I’ve Got a Crush on You, But Not for Me, and Embraceable You.

More hummable earworm songs: Georgia on My Mind, Dream a Little Dream of Me, Body and Soul, Just a Gigolo.

Music and lyrics have their own copyright dates as sheet music but recordings of those songs by particular musicians may fall under different later dates. For 2026, these specific performances entered the public domain:

In an interesting side note, the soundtracks for a number of cartoons were built on musical compositions that had earlier gone into public domain. For boomers, our first introduction of these tunes often came from cartoons, singing along to: “A Hunting We Will Go”, “The Farmer in the Dell”, and “Pop Goes the Weasel”. I have clear memories of several  cartoon heroes playing a flute to coax a cobra from a basket with the “Snake Charmer Song”.

How many of us boomers were called to the TV by the siren song of the “William Tell Overture,” the theme for The Lone Ranger?

Want to stroll farther down memory? Check out Duke University’s annual public domain summaries.

~~~

TKZers: Did any of these characters, books, films, cartoons, or music inspire your writing? Which ones and why?

Would any of these songs play well for the soundtrack of a movie based on your book? Which ones?

~~~

Tawny Lindholm Thrillers will probably enter public domain around the beginning of the 22nd century. Meanwhile, you can read them at this sales link.

Debbie Burke website.

What’s New in the Public Domain in 2026

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Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. —Mark Twain

* * *

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution grants the U.S. Congress the power “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”

Congress has used that power to define the “limited time” for authors’ works to be placed in the public domain. According to Google AI

Current U.S. law generally puts works into the public domain 95 years after their publication (for pre-1978 works) or 70 years after the author’s death (for post-1978 works, or 95/120 years for corporate works), with new works entering each January 1st, so as of January 1, 2026, works published in 1930 entered the public domain. This means works from 1930, like early Mickey Mouse cartoons, are now freely usable, while works created today will remain protected until 70 years after the creator’s death. 

* * *

The Center for the Study of the Public Domain on the website of Duke University Law School has a good explanation of the notion of the public domain. Here are a couple of quotes:

When works go into the public domain, they can legally be shared, without permission or fee.

The public domain is also a wellspring for creativity. You could think of it as the yin to copyright’s yang. Copyright law gives authors important rights that encourage creativity and distribution—this is a very good thing. But the United States Constitution requires that those rights last only for a “limited time,” so that when they expire, works go into the public domain, where future authors can legally build on the past—reimagining the books, making them into films, adapting the songs and movies. That’s a good thing too! It is part of copyright’s ecosystem. The point of copyright is to promote creativity, and the public domain plays a central role in doing so.

* * *

Fortunately for us, as of January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 entered the public domain in the U.S. Sound recordings from 1925 are also included.

Here are a few that entered the PD this year (with some interesting trivia):

  •  The Maltese Falcon  by Dashiell Hammett – Even though the gold- and jewel-laden Maltese Falcon wasn’t found in the story, the statuettes used as props in the movie turned out to be very valuable indeed. In 2013 a buyer paid $4.1 million for one of them.
  • The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie – Although Miss Marple had appeared in short stories before, The Murder at the Vicarage was her first role as the detective in a novel.
  • As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner – Faulkner claimed to have written the book in six weeks (!) while working at a Mississippi power plant. The book has 15 narrators over 59 chapters. (The title comes from a quote in Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus has traveled to Hades and meets his old pal Agamemnon who complains about his wife’s behavior as he lay dying.)
  • The first four Nancy Drew books by Carolyn Keene – As most of us know, Carolyn Keene was the pseudonym for the group of writers in the Stratemeyer Syndicate who produced the Nancy Drew novels. The first books were penned by Mildred Benson, a woman whose adventurous life as a journalist and pilot (I hope Patricia Bradley is reading this) contributed to Nancy Drew’s persona.
  • The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper (pseudonym of Arnold Munk) – The tale’s basic idea appeared in a Swedish journal in 1902. Early versions were published in American newspapers around 1906 as sermons or moral tales. The themes of optimism, perseverance, and service over status have captured children’s (and adults’) imaginations for decades. (I wonder if I could write a good book with those themes. I think I can. I think I can.)

A few more books on the 2026 list:

  • Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham
  • Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
  • Private Lives by Noël Coward
  • Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot
  • The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell

And several movies:

  • All Quiet on the Western Front, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture
  • Cimarron, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture
  • Animal Crackers, starring the Marx Brothers
  • Soup to Nuts, featuring later members of The Three Stooges
  • Hell’s Angels, Jean Harlow’s film debut, directed by Howard Hughes
  • Murder!, directed by Alfred Hitchcock

A more comprehensive list can be found on the Center for the Study of the Public Domain site.

* * *

So TKZers: Have you read or watched any of the new public domain additions? What other artistic works that have recently come into the public domain do you recommend?

* * *

 

Forty years ago, Lacey Alderson died—and the truth was buried with her. In Lacey’s Star, private pilot Cassie Deakin lands in the middle of the mystery and discovers old secrets that refuse to stay hidden any longer.

Click the image to fly with Cassie.

True Crime Thursday – Scam Pop Quiz

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by Debbie Burke

Let’s have a pop quiz to see if you can spot stealthy scam tricks.

Identify the differences in the following email addresses:

  1. SECURITYALERT@YOURBANK.com  SECURITYALERT@Y0URBANK.com
  2. fraud-alert@your#1creditcard.com      fraud-alert@your#lcreditcard.com
  3. securitywarning@shoppingsitewarning.com  securitywarning@shoppingsitewaming.com

Answers:

  1. The capital “O” is replaced a zero (0).
  2. The numeral “1” is replaced with the lower-case letter “l”. In some fonts, these two characters appear identical. But notice the slightly different spacing.
  3. In the domain name “m” is substituted for “rn” because they appear similar in some fonts.

Have you heard of homographs?

According to Merriam-Webster, the traditional definition is:

Two or more words spelled alike but different in meaning or derivation or pronunciation (such as the bow of a ship, a bow and arrow).

However, scammers have added a twist to create “homograph attacks.”

Attorney Steve Weisman explains:

A homograph attack is a type of cyber attack where attackers exploit look alike characters, often from different alphabets to create misleading domain names, usernames, or URLs that appear legitimate but actually lead to malicious sites.

Fraudsters constantly find new tricks like using “confusable letters” as defined by util.unicode.org:

Confusable characters are those that may be confused with others (in some common UI fonts), such as the Latin letter “o” and the Greek letter omicron “ο”. Fonts make a difference: for example, the Hebrew character “ס” looks confusingly similar to “o” in some fonts (such as Arial Hebrew), but not in others. 

Cyrillic letters used in Russian and other Slavic languages are especially popular with fraudsters because the characters often appear identical to letters used in English. The human eye can’t see the difference but the program on your computer or phone that “reads” the character can.

That tiny substitution allows fraudsters to redirect unsuspecting victims to bogus domain addresses.

Check out more details and examples in these articles from Guardio.io and Bleepingcomputer.com.

Stealthy tricks like these can fool even the most careful, vigilant consumer.

Scammers frequently send emails that appear to come from your bank, credit card company, or a shopping site you buy from. They warn that your account has been compromised or they ask if a suspicious high-dollar charge is valid.

If you click on their links, they redirect you to their own fraudulent website. Those feature logos and graphics that look exactly like those of the authentic websites. But those sites are clones created by scammers.

Texts can also appear to originate from the actual phone numbers of businesses or government agencies, but the numbers have been spoofed. If you call that number back, the call goes to the scammer.

Because the sender’s address or phone number appears totally legitimate, you might be tempted to click.

Don’t.

If you go there, they may download malware to your computer. Alternatively, they may pump you for personal information, asking you to verify your identity with your date of birth, Social Security number, etc.

Yup, that verifies your identity, all right—enough to allow them to steal it.

Impersonation and homograph attacks have recently become so prevalent, many government agencies and businesses now post warnings headlined at the top of their real websites.

In a truly ironic twist in September, 2025, three bold scammers impersonated the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the very agency whose function is to catch cybercriminals.

When you receive emails or texts with links, do not click. Close the message. To determine if the contact is legitimate, call the number on your credit card or billing statement.

Visit the website address shown on your billing statement. Don’t automatically assume the first website that appears in an online search is legitimate. Manipulation of logarithms can move misleading sites higher on search pages. 

If you click a link in error, immediately contact the real entity to report the incident so they can flag or freeze your account. If fraud takes place, additionally contact local law enforcement and IC3.

Thanks as always to Steve Weisman and his watchdog site Scamicide for alerting people to new twists.

What a world. Sigh…

~~~

TKZers: Have you experienced homograph attacks by email or text? Do you know of additional stealthy misleading tricks? Please share in the comments.

~~~

Looking for a binge bundle for a bargain? Try the three-book gift set of Tawny Lindholm Thrillers for only $5.99.

 

How To Make Real Money as A Novelist

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By John Gilstrap

Spoiler: It ain’t quick and it ain’t easy.

“Okay Boomer.”

There, we’ve all said it together so now that’s out of the way. I wrote my first published novel when “Lion King” and “The Santa Clause” were the top two new releases of the year, and O.J. Simpson’s criminal trial for murdering his wife dominated the news cycle. Query letters were sent via U.S. mail (don’t forget the self-addressed stamped envelope), and manuscripts, God help us, had to be printed then mailed via Fed-Ex at about $25 a pop. Submission and rejection were expensive. On the positive side, the expense was also a barrier to entry. When there’s expense, I think writers are more careful about their editing in particular and storytelling in general.

Thirty books later, a few of which were bestsellers and fewer of which bombed, I think I’ve got insight worth sharing about how to survive as a working novelist and end up with a decent reliable income. NOTE: Mileage may differ for other writers.

Write a good story that is accessible to a wide audience.

I write thrillers about families in jeopardy. They are emotional roller coasters that are simultaneously heartwarming and violent. I intentionally appeal to as broad an audience as I can.

You write what you write — romance, sci-fi, fantasy, young adult, children’s, whatever. Then there’s romantasy, a genre I didn’t even know existed until I did a joint signing with Jennifer Armentrout and saw that her line was about fifteen times longer than mine. The idea is to embrace the largest possible audience to sell the largest number of books. Even before we get into talking about publicity and marketing, if you’ve written a cross-genre sci-fi vampire romance set on Planet Xanthar where all the characters are ugly, you’ve got to understand that the odds of success are stacked against you.

Sell your work to and through a traditional publisher.

(See Okay Boomer, above). Yes, there are gatekeepers (yay for them!), yes, there’s rejection, delayed gratification and all the blah-blah and yada-yada about self-promotion is true. And yes, you have to have an agent to gain entry to the gatekeepers.

But your stuff is good, right? You shouldn’t be afraid of no stinkin’ gatekeeper. Once you’re through the gate and you’ve become a critical element of the traditional publishing machine, you’ll have access to retail outlets and film agents and foreign agents and subrights opportunities that can pay handsomely. All of these are negotiated by others on your behalf so that you can get on with the business of writing the next book.

NOTE: All the rumors you hear from “experts” who say that the traditional system is closed to new writers are lies. The entire industry thrives on new writers.

ALSO NOTE: The entry gate is also the exit gate. Once you get a contract, the pressure remains to keep producing good stories that are accessible to wide audiences.

To get ahead of the comments I imagine will come, I acknowledge the royalties paid by traditional publishers to their authors is considerably less that that which is paid through online publishers, but you’ve got to consider that trad publishers pay advances and then bear the burden of all production and marketing costs. By my math, 15% of 25,000 sales is better than 70% of 250 sales.

Don’t stop writing.

Whether you make $1,000 from your first book or $100,000, you can’t stop writing if you want to make this writing gig a career. One book per year, minimum — or even more than that if you’ve chosen certain genres. This is a business of numbers and name recognition. By definition, nobody knows who you are when your first book drops, but if readers like the story, a solid percentage of them will buy your next book, too, and then tell their friends about it. The people who first learn about you on your fifth book (or fifteenth) may be inspired to go back and buy your previous works.

So, folks, this brings us to the true secret of how to make a living as a novelist. Never forget that . . .

The backlist sells the front list.

Of my 30 novels, 16 are part of my Jonathan Grave thriller series, with #17 on its way in February, 2026. Every time a new book is released (look for Scorched Earth, dropping on February 24), there’s a big spike in sales for the first book in the series, and smaller spikes in all the books that follow. The backlist lives forever and produces income forever, but for best results, that income pump needs to be primed annually with a new release. Otherwise, the sales curves flatten.

Do the math. Every book is an evergreen revenue generator, and those revenues add up over time. Now, 30 years into this game, I have reliable income from my current book, previous years’ books, foreign versions of all of the above, ongoing renewing movie options, and miscellaneous sources like speaking fees and the occasional short story. All of this in addition to the Social Security payments I’ll start accepting in a couple of years.

As promised, the route to real money is neither quick nor easy. But it is very real.

Final note: If you read this post on the the day it was published, I will be in Las Vegas, hanging out with 65,000 of my closest friends at the SHOT Show. Check my Facebook page for updates.

Pre-order your copy today!

Tagline, You’re It! Summing Up Your Story In Two Sentences

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By PJ Parrish

You tell a lot about a book from its back cover.

I love reading the backcopy of books. It can be a powerful selling tool, summing up in just a couple paragraphs the soul of a story, giving us a glimpse of the plot and characters, without giving away the guts. When backcopy is good, it’s an art. And when it’s bad…well, I guess we can blame that on some poor editor somewhere. (I’ve had my share). Or maybe the problem runs deeper than that. We’ll get back to that…

Years ago, I did a long detailed post about how to write backcopy. Click here, if interested. But what I’d like to talk about today is what is known as the tagline. In usually one to three sentences, a good tagline — like a newspaper headline — tells you in a glance what the book is, at its true heart. And like a well-rendered headline, a book tagline makes you stop for a second or two and maybe get seduced.

I ran across a good example of this recently when I finally cracked open a novel I had gotten for Christmas. It’s set in France, so the giver was sure I would enjoy it. So was I because the tagline was pretty good:

In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

I won’t be coy. The book is Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale. Now I know this is a hugely popular, even beloved, book. But dang, I just couldn’t get into it, and I gave it about 150 pages. Well written but just not my cup of tea. À chacun son goût.

But as I said, it got me thinking about what makes for good taglines. If you are self-publishing, you need to know about this because it really can make or break a sale for a casually browsing reader. If you don’t believe me, go haunt a (real) bookstore and watch browsers. They pick up a book, drawn maybe by spiffy cover art and then, almost always, they turn it over and read the back.

Movies are really good at taglines, probably because in the good old days, the movie poster was like a carnival barker trying to lure you inside. Here’s maybe my all time favorites:

In space, no one can hear you scream.

Alien, of course. But I like the tagline for the sequel Alien vs Pedator as well:

Whoever wins, we lose.

And then there’s the classic:

"DOUBLE INDEMNITY" (1944) one sheet - 27"x41" great Billy Wilder movie poster! - Picture 2 of 6

Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity is a work of noir genius. Every line of dialogue is as sharp as the tagline itself. This should be assigned viewing for every writer.

And just because I watched the movie again the other night:

best movie taglines example high noon

Okay, intermission! Time out for a short quiz. See if you can tell which movies match these poster taglines. Answers at the end.

  1. You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies
  2. When he pours, he reigns
  3. Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.
  4. The first casualty of war is innocence.
  5. On every street in every city in this country, there’s a nobody who dreams of being a somebody.
  6. He was the perfect weapon until he became the target.
  7. If you only see one movie this year … You need to get out more.
  8. A man went looking for America, and he couldn’t find it anywhere.
  9. Don’t get mad. Get everything.
  10. She brought a small town to its feet and a corporation to its knees.

I’ve been lucky to have some great editors over my career who shepherded my books through the backcopy and tagline process. For An Unquiet Grave: Not Every Soul Rests In Peace. And one of my faves from my Thomas & Mercer editor for She’s Not There:

A past she can’t remember.
A killer she can’t recongize.
And they’re both catching up with her.

Just for fun I pulled some books off my shelf in search of good taglines. Some taglines are only one juicy line. Some are puns. Others can stretch on into mini-plot summaries. But all tease and tantylize:

  • Yesterday was for youthful indiscretions. Today is for consequences. — Sue Grafton’s Y Is For Yesterday.
  • A tough detective follows a lead back to a 1960s Borcht Belt resort to crack an unsolved crime — or was it a crime at all? — Reed Farrel Coleman’s Redemption Street.
  • From a helicopter high above the empty California desert, a man is sent free-falling into the night…in Chicago, a woman learns that an elite team of ex-army investigators is being hunted down one by one…and on the streets of Portland, Jack Reacher — soldier, cop, hero — is pulled out of his wandering life by a code that few other people could understand. — Lee Child’s Bad Luck and Trouble.

Okay, that last one is not a true tagline, just a good summary. But I really like the tagline for the first Reacher movie: If he’s coming for you, you probably deserve it.

The best taglines distill the core emotional, thematic, or high-stakes essence of your story down into a punchy, memorable phrase. It serves as the HEADLINE above the rest of the backcopy, wherein you can go into more plot and character details. It also hints at the tone of your book — humor, noir, romantic.

Do you really need a tagline? Well, not if you’re famous. A scan of my bookshelf showed me that the bestsellers rarely have them because the big name is lure enough. Sometimes, the space is given over to a blurb from a fellow writer. And if you’re lucky, you’ve hit upon a fabulous title that needs no other help. A few from my bookshelf: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Something Wicked This Way Comes. To Kill A Mockingbird. Midnight In the Garden Of Good And Evil. And David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day because I am still doing my Duolingo French every day.

So, what about it? Can you write a great tagline for your book? Can you boil it down to its purest self and pour it out in one or two pithy lines? It’s hard. It’s an art even.

And at risk of depressing you, let me add a final thought. If you — or your poor overworked editor — can’t come up with a good tagline, well, maybe you’re not really sure, in your heart of hearts, what your story is really about. But that’s a post for another day.

ANSWERS

  1. The Social Network
  2. Cocktail
  3. Interstellar
  4. Platoon
  5. Taxi Driver
  6. Bourne Identity
  7. Naked Gun
  8. Easy Rider
  9. The First Wives Club
  10. Erin Brockovich

 

Rewiring

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We shook things up at Casa Wortham this week. We’ve lived here for about seven years in what we call the new house, and felt the kitchen needed a change not long after the Bride’s oven sparked, gagged, and filled the house with the heady aroma of burned chemicals.

But this isn’t about major appliances. Remember when you first moved into your place and beheld empty drawers in the kitchen?

One question always comes up. Where does the silverware go? (In Texas, daily eating utensils are silverware, even though the real silver ((plate)) is in a wooden case stuffed back in a cabinet or under a bed and only comes out on Thanksgiving or when someone dies).

Then there are wooden spoons, cup towels, oversize forks and spoons, tongs, measuring cups and spoons, vegetable peelers, graters, garlic presses, thermometers, kitchen scales, bottle openers, corn cob holders.

They need a home in the shallow drawers.

What’s the proper dispersal method?

And while we’re at it, there’s the (ominous music) junk drawer. Where will that one be, because we know for certain that a drawer will devolve into one of these chaotic black holes that scientists with pocket protectors in their shirts discuss in hushed tones.

I’m sure you have one of these sacred disorganized repositories of migratory odds and ends nestled in a bed of bread ties, old rubber bands, thick blue rubber bands off celery stalks, nuts, bolts, mysterious batters that might or might not be dead (but you can’t throw them out until you know), and mysterious keys you’ve never seen before in your life. Wait. How the hell did my razor get in there? Was someone shaving carrots?

On moving day in the new house, we unloaded boxes marked KITCHEN into random drawers that were probably open and waiting, and have lived with those spur of the moment decisions since.

But there have been problems. The silverware drawer is between the oven and stove. That’s our serving area when we don’t have sit-down meals, which is 95% of the time. And there are usually a lot of people in line.

If someone is filling a plate, they’re in the way of spoons, forks, and knives, which we usually forget. Then we go back and excuse ourselves to open the drawer, or cut in line, which can be deadly with sons-in-law and hungry teens.

On Wednesday of this week, the Bride came home with a couple of classy bamboo dividers to help separate some of the more aggressive utensils. I was between writing projects, and the next thing I knew, we’d emptied all the drawers onto the countertops and forced significant changes in implement and gadget placement.

Now it all makes sense, to a small degree, but here’s the problem. We keep returning to the wrong places for wooden spoons, measuring cups, and the scissors which reside in the junk drawer. We’re on a learning curve, and I sent our daughters and sons-in-law a thirty-second video preparing them the new organization.

They were aghast.

The Redhead, mother of two, sent an eye-rolling emoji, and Taz, the youngest and mother of three kids, was verbally displeased. But then again, she even hates it when the Bride replaces accent pillows with new, fresh additions.

But I explained. “Change is good. Remembering where everything is in their new locations is exercise for the brain.”

With that, I needed proof to counter verbal attacks when the all come over Sunday night for out weekly get together.

An exhausting thirty second search on medical databases provided this agreement. “Positive change and new experiences are excellent for the brain, promoting neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to form new connections), boosting cognitive function, improving mood (via dopamine, that’s why it’s called dope, according to my dad) and building mental resilience, even though the brain’s amygdala might initially perceive change as a threat. Varying routines, learning new skills, exploring new places, and engaging in diverse activities build cognitive reserve, helping you adapt and maintain long-term brain health.” 

Now I have to make this relevant to my writing blog post.

With that in mind, I looked up “neuroplasticity and amygdala” before diving into another search to find that it’s beneficial for authors to change genres, or write short stories, or nonfiction articles or books. In other words, shake it up.

While reading those confusing medical evaluations and articles for another fifteen minutes, I learned that changing genres or writing styles introduces new narrative tools, breaks writer’s block (which I don’t believe in), fosters artistic growth, and offers fresh perspectives, though it requires extra time.

Switching genres challenges an individual to think differently, find new solutions, and prevents creative stagnation, leading to broader skills and more diverse ideas that can even enrich their primary genre. 

But wait! Getting out of your writing lane is commonly considered a bad idea in literary circles. One article I read explored and supported Stephen Kings change from his traditional horror novels to write an alternate history with 11/22/63, or Cormac McCarthy’s shift to his post-apocalyptic The Road. I’ve been told only bestselling authors should take those chances.

Some say we should stick to our writing lanes and do what our fans come to expect.

Fine, wait a while after you write something different before submitting it, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a break from your WIP and writing a science fiction or post-apocalyptic short story if only for personal satisfaction.

This mental exercise is a great way to get out of a rut.

When you do that, find a different place to write for a day or two. Such a change just might inspire something different. Many authors write in one location, and edit in another.

You don’t have to sell those new works today, or tomorrow. You can put them in a figurative junk drawer (see the unplanned connection here? I love the subconscious author.) and dust it off sometime in the future when you need it.

I did that way back in 2012, when my first novel was published and my editors wanted the next book. I’d written a three-thousand-word short story in 1986 that sat in my file all that time, but when I needed an idea, I re-read that old experiment and found the foundation of the second novel in my Red River series, Burrows, which was truly a horror story.

Or maybe you’ve read a non-fiction article in a magazine and thought, “I know that much.” Give it a try.

For several years I wrote “hook and bullet” stories for several outdoor magazines. More than one took awards from the Outdoor Writers of America and the Texas Outdoor Writers Association. I’m proud of those stories and the framed acknowledgments from my peers.

One was an informative history of the longbow, and with liberal applications of scotch, the article was quirky and funny.

I’d exercised my creativity and different writing skills, because I like to try different things.

Like moving the silverware drawer.

In Science Explores News, an article about Dr. Nathan Spreng, a neuroscientist at Cornell University, explored how the brain changes as we learn. Much of the article concentrates on new physical tasks, such as hitting a baseball, but a deeper idea comes from pianists who can play complicated musical scores without thinking about where their fingers go. Their minds can wander, and that opens up even more neural pathways.

So if we get out of our writing lane and try something different, can authors open new creative paths to follow?

Some doctors think it does.

Try a short story, or an article, or start a new chapter in a different kind of novel just to see if that old excitement is there, or if a different way of thinking helps your writing. No one has to see it but you.