Writing Crime Fiction

WRITING LITE #2 — Beginnings

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Hi, everyone. Welcome to WRITING LITE #2. I’m still talking about suspense, but this time I start at the beginning and discuss the power of that first line. I talk about why it’s important, how to approach it, and give you some of my all-time favorite examples. It is a little longer than I anticipated … Read more

Introducing “Writing Lite” by Libby Hellmann

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Hi, all. Some of you know I teach a number of workshops devoted to the craft of fiction writing, especially crime fiction. For a while now, I’ve been toying with the idea of producing short videos about craft, and I decided to go ahead with them. I’m calling the series “Writing Lite” because none of … Read more

Sample Some Excellent Thrillers…

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Mysteries, Thrills and Spills

Mysteries, Thrills and SpillsLooking for some great reads? Look no further. Some of my author pals and I have put together a Sampler of our favorite thrillers. And it’s absolutely free. And it’s available both as a Mobi file and an E-pub. (Right-click or control-click on those links to download the file to your hard drive.) Included are:

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Murder Most Deadly?

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When I began writing crime fiction, I remember lots of chatter about the perfect murder weapon. The undetected murder. The exotic substance that couldn’t be identified. I heard about poisons like oleander, foxglove, arsenic, and — moving up the hazardous bio-chemical chain — cyanide, sarin, and anthrax. Indeed, I flirted with ricin in one of … Read more

Anatomy of Crime Fiction: Building Suspense

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  Last year I started a series of one-day workshops devoted to the craft of crime fiction. They’re broken up into various segments, but I wanted to summarize one of the most popular: Building Suspense . Btw, this isn’t limited to crime fiction as you’ll see. But it is a rather long post, so curl … Read more