It was fewer than 400 words. Barely a page. But I’ve begun my first cozy mystery. I honestly have no idea where it’s going yet. At this point, I’m just introducing characters, getting to know the setting. Regardless, it’s a start and I’m excited to see where the story takes me. I’m also excited to […]
The final draft is written. It’s been edited and proofread and rewritten and edited and proofread again. I’m ready to make a decision. Do I want to send this book off to agents and publishers, or do I want to bite the bullet and self-publish? I’ve tried the self-publishing route and it didn’t go well, […]
Sorry, folks. I know WIP Thursday, just doesn’t have the same ring to it, but I just ran out of time yesterday. So, a day late, but hopefully not a dollar short, is an excerpt from my new book, Home To My Arms: A Halloran Mystery. In it, Jamie and Pip are trudging through a […]
How is it Wednesday already? I don’t know, but I double checked my calendar, and it definitely is, so here is another excerpt from my new book, Home To My Arms: A Halloran Mystery. In it, there’s a slight misunderstanding between Jamie and Pip. Fortunately, the door was locked, as it should have been. Unfortunately, […]
It seemed like it would never get here, but I am finally finished with rewrites on my new book, Home to My Arms! It’s one last pass for proofreading and then I start the query process. As promised, only two days late, I want to share an exerpt. The situation is that the main characters, […]
If you started your visit to my site on my homepage, you’ll see I am author JD Stephens. I used to be author Joe Stephens, but I took a long break from writing for some pretty life-altering things, such as meeting and marrying the love of my life and adopting her beloved daughter, making her […]
I’ve read detective fiction for as long as I’ve been able to read, practically. I started with the classics: Holmes, Queen, Marple, Poirot. But then I picked up a new classic: Spenser. I’ve read others in the genre, including other characters created by Robert B. Parker. Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, and Parker’s Western heroes, Virgil […]
Book titles are an interesting phenomenon. Some are strictly utilitarian–they are literally descriptive in some way, like Robert B. Parker’s The Godwulf Manuscript or Looking for Rachel Wallace or Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Others are all or part of a phrase or sentence drawn straight out […]
Here’s another excerpt from my first ever book, only completely new. It’s a soft-boiled detective book narrated by my younger, smarter, more talented alter ego, Harry Shalan Private Eye. Hope you’ll let me know what you think! Stultz was there but not all there when I got to his room in the ER, trailed by […]
As you know if you’ve been following my blog for a bit that I’m doing major renovations on my previously written books in preparation for re-launching the whole series. If these books were houses, I would be doing a complete gut job, taking them clear down to the studs and, other than leaving the basic […]