Inside a killer’s head

When writing a thriller, there needs to be a sense of jeopardy for the protagonist. Perhaps a killer is after her, maybe more than one. The killer can be left vague, abstract, distant, and this allows the reader to imagine how terrifying they can be. [nice image by Jiceh, by the way]

Or…

The author can go inside the killer’s head, show the reader what is in there. This approach is less followed, for several reasons.

(1) The writer is not a killer (well, usually, one hopes), and writers should ‘write what they know’.…


Writers on the edge…(Genius)

Yesterday I watched the film Genius, in which Jude Law plays the utterly driven writer Tom Wolfe, and Colin Firth plays the (genius) editor Max Perkins, who also edited Fitzgerald and Hemingway, both portrayed admirably in the film.

I think writers should go watch (or rent) the movie. Here’s why.

Wolfe has been rejected by every publishing house in town, until Max sees something in his work. Most writers, even successful ones, had a rough start, or have not yet even had that ‘lucky break’, which seems lucky when it happens to others, and hard-earned when it finally happens to them.…


66 Metres – Opening

Sixty-Six Metres is the depth at which normal air starts to become toxic to divers. Stay at that depth or below, and you will die.

Nadia has never dived that deep, but to save her sister, she’s going to have to.

Here’s how it all starts…

Prologue

The only thing worth killing for is family.

Her father’s words to her, the day they’d come for him.

She’d been fourteen when two men in combat fatigues and balaclavas burst into the kitchen where she and her father were enjoying breakfast.