Readers sometimes ask how much of the science in Storm Damage is real. The reassuring answer is that the drugs called Rapture and Zombie do not exist. The less reassuring answer is that many of the ingredients needed to imagine them do.

When I started building Sonny Marshall, I had a decision to make. Every crime writer needs a way for their protagonist to move through the world outside the investigation — a life, a job, something the reader sees them do when nobody’s dying. The easy choice would have been to make him a cop, a […]

In a thriller built around a protagonist with a night job as well as a case to solve, the temptation is to treat the day-job scenes as connective tissue — table-setting to get through before the “real” plot resumes. That’s a mistake. The found-family scenes are where the crime plot’s stakes get their exchange rate; […]

Every amateur-detective series eventually runs into the same credibility problem: why does this civilian keep ending up at crime scenes? Inventing a fresh, plausible reason every book is a losing game — sooner or later the coincidences stack up and the reader stops buying it. The fix isn’t a better excuse. It’s an internal compulsion […]

The sidekick trap happens when a second investigator exists mainly to ask questions the reader needs answered, admire the lead’s brilliance, and occasionally get captured. She’s furniture with a badge. A partner who’s genuinely equal doesn’t just share page time — she has her own case, her own methods, her own limits, and the standing […]

I get this question in some form from nearly every reader who reaches out about craft: why does the hero have to be damaged? Can’t a character just be good at their job and decent to the people around them and still carry a story? The short answer is no, not for very long. An […]