Writing About Writing

Erotic Novels & Stories: Does Sex (Still) Sell?

Consider 50 Shades of Grey, the most recent entry and phenomenon in the sex book wars. I read a couple of pages at the checkout counter of a local bookstore and that was enough for me. My daughter says that she and a group of girlfriends read scenes aloud and howled. So what’s to be made of the trilogy’s 65 million in sales? Do women really crave bondage? Or is it simply that every generation needs a sex novel? When I was a boy it was Peyton Place. I was just a kid when it came out so it must have been a few years before I read it though I remember the sex scenes as if it were yesterday, bad girl Betty Anderson and rich boy Rodney Harrington on the beach, illegitimacy, incest and more. Then there was Fanny Hill, a bit flowery for my taste but it did the trick, and of course … Read more

Why Crime Fiction Academy Matters

About a year and a half ago Noreen Tomassi, the Director of Manhattan’s Center For Fiction, came to me with the idea of creating a place for crime fiction. A place where unpublished writers could come to finish the crime novel they’d started but stalled, where writers could be taught by really good published authors, could sit around a table with the best crime fiction writers of our time, people like Lee Child and Elmore Leonard and Laura Lippman, to name just a few, and a place to study and learn from classics in the genre. We did it because no program like it existed. There are writing programs everywhere, but not one that concentrates on crime fiction. In fact, few writing programs offer students even one class in crime fiction (and to those students I say, come take your classes at CFA and we’ll find a way to work it out with your school). … Read more

The Plight of Crime Fiction Or Why Crime Fiction Writers Always Feel Bad

People often ask me why I choose to write crime fiction and I say it’s because it encompasses all the big human emotions – love, hate, greed, revenge, fear — as well as the basic moral questions of good and evil, and that’s more than enough for me. When people say, “I don’t read crime fiction at all,” as if they would not deign to waste their time or intelligence on something so trivial and clearly beneath them (it’s interesting to note that they have no problem saying this to me, a crime fiction writer), I say, “So, you’ve never read Crime & Punishment or An American Tragedy or Lolita or Poe or Chandler or Hammett or contemporary novels like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History or Richard Ford’s Canada or almost anything by Joyce Carol Oates, the “literary” list of crime fiction novels goes on and on. Frankly, I’m hard pressed to think of a … Read more

Crime Fiction Lover Blog – What Does It Take?

This past September I was guest columnist for the Crime Fiction Lover blog talking about how one can become a crime writer.  Here is an excerpt: “Today we’re honoured to present a guest column by one of the most respected names in crime fiction – Jonathan Santlofer. The author of numerous bestsellers in the genre, including The Death Artist, Color Blind, The Killing Art, Anatomy of Fear and The Murder Notebook, last year he helped found the Crime Fiction Academy in New York. His classic crime cred is impressive as well, with his short stories appearing in the Ellery Queen Magazine, Akashic’s New Jersey Noir, and LA Noire, a compilation which tied in with a PlayStation/Xbox game of the same name. He edited the book, which also included stories by Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Joe R Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Duane Swierczynski and Andrew Vachss. We thought it would be a great idea … Read more

You Are What You Read – Ellery Queen

The mystery writing magazine Ellery Queen asked me to contribute a blog post about writing the short story. Here is an excerpt: “More and more the short story has become an important part of my writing life. The other day I was thinking about the old Alfred Hitchcock TV show, one in particular where the housewife kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb then serves it to the police who come to investigate, and another about a restaurant where human flesh was the specialty of the house, and The Twilight Zone and Mr. & Mrs. North and Dragnet and Hawaiian Eye and Surfside Six and The Mod Squad, all of them running together in my brain, commingling with the detective and mystery stories I read as a boy, the Hardy Boys my favorite series, along with horror comics like Tales From the Crypt, and Classic Comics like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which … Read more