Jan 31

icebergKaren Dionne was interviewed recently for an article in the February issue of Writer’s Digest Magazine on environmental thrillers.

“With topics like global warming headlining the nightly news,” WD editor Jordan Rosenfeld writes, “the eco-thriller is heating up, scaring readers with a dose of ‘what if’ reality. Thriller writers draw from plausible terrors, even if these are enhanced with fantastic leaps. So it makes sense to those in the publishing industry that, just as novels about Sept. 11 began to surge into the market a few years after, the eco-thriller is on the rise because so much attention is being paid to climatic change.”

Karen’s debut novel, FREEZING POINT, is set in the Antarctic, where extremists plot to stop an energy company from melting icebergs into drinking water, neither realizing that the water is contaminated with an unknown deadly disease.

“One of the things that makes eco-thrillers so compelling,” the article quotes her as saying, “is that the earth is our home. If the environment turns on us, there’s no safe place.”

You can read the entire article online at Writer’s Digest’s website.

Jan 18

By CJ Lyons
LIFELINES-3.jpg
Secret One: Write the damn book!

Of course, the all important first step is to finish a manuscript. Maybe not even one, it might take several. Most people don’t realize it, but the average published author writes over half a million words before they sell.

Let me repeat that. Half a million words.

We may hear of those “overnight” successes, but they are rare.

Just be prepared that you might not hit a home run the first time out—but that’s all right, because you’ll be building contacts and learning valuable tips that will help your writing career. Read the rest of this entry »