Brash Blog

Big Ideas and Big Names in suspense from Brash Books

Get the big ideas from the biggest names in suspense on the Brash Books blog. Here, you'll find posts by some of your favorite mystery authors sharing their views on crime fiction - along with inside stories about everything from how they wrote their bestselling thrillers to what inspires them.

You'll also hear from experts in the mystery and suspense genre, along with fans, publishing insiders, and of course, Brash Books. Posts will range from informative to controversial - but you can bet every one will be a compelling read. This is your destination to explore great crime fiction writing - past, present and future - from the authors, readers, and publishers who keep it alive.

Criss Cross: A Wild & Entertaining Romp

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Novelist James L. Thane, author of the crime novels No Place to Die and Until Death, shares his fondness for Tom Kakonis' thriller Criss Cross. In Cross Cross, his second crime novel, Tom Kakonis brings together a disparate cast of odd, strange and curious characters who come together very uneasily in the hope of making one big score. Principal among them is Mitchell Morse, a former college football player and ex-cop who's spiraled downhill to the point where he's now employed as a security guard at a Fleets superstore in Grand Rapids, Michigan, chasing down shoplifters. Before being fired from his last job, Mitch had met a fellow security guard named Jean Satterfield. Mitch has not... more

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“Dick Lochte is Writing a Mystery Novel” — The Story Behind SLEEPING DOG

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Sleeping Dog by author Dick Lockte

My guess is that most writers become novelists in the usual way. Their muse convinces them to buy writing software. They use it to complete a manuscript. They’re lucky enough to find an agent and an editor who like what they’ve done. That’s not how I did it. The words “Chapter One,” hadn’t even occurred to me when I parlayed several essays that appeared in the Los Angeles Times into a weekly column in the paper’s Book Review section. The editor of the Book Review, Digby Diehl, had established a policy of running a short biographical line at the bottom of each article. I suggested “Dick Lochte is working on a screenplay,” which was the truth. But Digby didn’t like... more

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Creating Waverly: The Story Behind MICHIGAN ROLL

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The day after Labor Day, 1986, I sat down at my desk in the cramped room I called, without a pinch of irony, my “study,” and faced one more time the terror of the blank page. More accurately, one last time, for with three and a half rejection-dusty manuscripts on a shelf behind me, I had pledged to myself this would be my final attempt at fiction writing. Another failure and I would settle in my dwindling years for the genteel poverty of the academician’s life, complete with a variety of harmless hobbies and arcane interests. After all—a 56 year old first novelist? Seemed preposterous, a bad joke. Nevertheless, a promise is a promise, and so I set to work, and slowly, painfully,... more

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Brash Words: Lots of Positive Buzz Leading Up to Our Sept 2 Launch

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Treasure Coast by author Tom Kakonis

We're only a few days from our Sept. 2nd launch and already we're getting a lot of positive buzz. We were thrilled by an interview with our co-founders, Lee Goldberg & Joel Goldman, in Kirkus Reviews. Here's an excerpt: The Brash editions I’ve seen so far are handsome, trade-size paperbacks, with bold cover imagery and elegant interior design. “Joel and I decided right off that we were either going to do this ‘first-class’ or not at all,” says Goldberg, “with high-quality covers that vividly and definitively establish a franchise for each author or series that we are publishing. We also decided that our covers would be contemporary, regardless of when the stories take... more

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Writing Blind – To Outline or Not to Outline

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Novelist John Connolly has an interesting approach to writing his highly-acclaimed novels: My first draft tends to be a little rough. There will be inconsistencies of dialogue and character. Some characters will appear in the early stages only to disappear later, their failure to manifest themselves once again left entirely unexplained. Some things seem like good ideas at the start, but quickly prove to be distractions from the main thrust of the book, and as soon as that realisation hits me I tend to let those elements slide. I don't fret too much about how untidy the text may be (although, in my darker moments, I wonder what might happen if I didn't live to finish the book and... more

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The Rap on “MAN EATER”

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J. Kingston Pierce,  the editor of The Rap Sheet and the senior editor of January Magazine, reviews Gar Anthony Haywood's thriller Man Eater.  Cutthroat film development executive Ronnie Deal ("smart, single, and beautiful -- 'heartbreak in a tall, dark hourglass,' somebody had once called her") is sitting in an L.A. bar one day, nursing her anger at a rival for fouling up her "breakout film," when a "physically intimidating" black guy suddenly commences to wail on a "young, frail blonde woman" nearby. Reacting viscerally, her adrenaline poisoned by rage at her own manifest misfortunes, Ronnie shocks even herself by battering the thug unconscious with a beer bottle. Only later, when... more

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