Summer camp, boarding school, college—interesting places for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that they have as one of their founding principles the idea that you will, absolutely, leave them. In fact, leaving them is one of the main points. You will come to them as a stranger, bright, shiny, and anxious.…
A Note from Sena Desai Gopal The 86th Village takes place in a southern Indian village doomed to drown in the backwaters of a dam. The story and characters are fictitious, but the setting is autobiographical. My ancestral village, Yadahalli, will drown in one of India’s biggest dams—The Upper Krishna Project—across the 900-mile long…
It’s fair to say we’ve both read or watched the best thrillers during the last thirty years. In our opinion, obviously! And there’s one thing we always agree on: what scares us the most is serial killer with clear motives and a detailed plan. A relentless murderer who won’t stop until they’ve realized their grand…
In December 1957 and January 1958, nineteen-year-old Charlie Starkweather embarked on a killing spree through Nebraska and Wyoming. Most of the murders took place in just over a week, an eight-day rampage of shootings and stabbings that confounded authorities and terrorized the general public. With his even younger girlfriend in tow, Charlie killed eleven people,…
Author Peter Blauner discusses Christ in Concrete, an often-overlooked novel about the life of Italian immigrants on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1920s and a twelve-year-old boy who must support his family after his father’s untimely death. Most crime novels try to hook you on the first page, or even the first…
My name is Tori—not the diminutive of Victoria, but an adaptation from the Viking god of thunder. If I were a character in your story, the origin of my name might reflect my personality and guide my mission. Whether you created me as Thor’s Earthly descendent with yet-to-be-discovered magical powers or a feminist hero battling…
When I started writing a psychological thriller, it was inevitable that a lot of psychology would be baked into it. I have a PhD in Social Psychology and spent six years (ten, if you count undergrad) steeped in the study of human minds. I started out as a writer of literary fiction who often dabbled…
Scribbling my first novels back in the 1970s, already I knew, just knew, that I would never write mystery. Not. Ever. I loved reading classical mystery novels, but the plotty plots didn’t feel right for me as a writer, or the red herrings, or the first murder, the second murder, the third murder, or any…
In 1984, a legally blind man named Chizuo Matsumoto started a yoga and meditation class in a one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo. Originally known as Oomu Shinsen no Kai, the “Aum Immortal Mountain Wizard Association,” the program took on a life of its own, growing exponentially in popularity and fueling the ego of its founder. In…
I had an appointment to view a small house to rent in West Hollywood. It was my second day in Los Angeles having just moved—with my ten-year-old daughter and two cats—from a tiny English village to pursue a screenwriting dream. Luckily, I had a job lined up at New Line Cinema and a green card. …
