Hooked and Scrolled

Hooked and Scrolled: Fiction in the Age of the Feed

How do you think the publishing industry is adapting to the ‘attention economy,’ and how do you feel about those shifts? Are books an antidote to shortening attention spans?

Fiction might be the last quiet act of rebellion.

The publishing industry today is running its own campaign in the “attention economy,” and the product is still—miraculously—selling: books in all their formats, paper, digital, and audio. But the pitch has changed. In a world where we scroll more than we linger, publishing has borrowed tricks from Madison Avenue: tighter hooks, shorter blurbs, and a ruthless devotion to packaging. Every tagline, cover, and tweet is designed to create an infinite hunger for a hit of dopamine. Don Draper would’ve called it “the carousel,” except now it spins at TikTok speed.

As a writer, I feel this pull constantly. I write lean because I assume my reader is one notification away from leaving me for a push alert. Every sentence has to seduce you—to earn another line read, another turn of the page, another moment of attention. Each word becomes a small act of persuasion, inviting you to stay with me, to linger a little longer.

But there’s an irony here. Books might be the last long-form medium that still rewards deep focus. A good novel doesn’t shout; it hums softly, then lingers in your mind, like a quiet echo. It demands immersion—the slow, deliberate attention that scrolling never allows. In that sense, fiction both participates in and quietly resists the attention economy. This tension isn’t just a feature of literature—it mirrors the larger structures of desire, productivity, and control that shape our digital lives.

Some thinkers, like Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, offer a way to understand this tension. They describe capitalism as a “schizophrenic machine,” which unleashes desire only to trap it again in predictable cycles of consumption. The feed works the same way: endless choice loops us back into craving and fatigue. Byung-Chul Han calls this the “achievement society,” where we exploit ourselves willingly, mistaking constant productivity for self-realization. Reading offers a quiet alternative. A novel demands nothing of us but attention. In giving ourselves fully to it, we resist these cycles and reclaim a form of freedom that the algorithm can’t touch.

Under such conditions, it’s difficult to sustain the kind of contemplative attention democracy requires. You can’t deliberate when you’re exhausted, or imagine alternatives when every spare moment is filled with debt, distraction, and the low-grade hum of performance anxiety.

That’s why reading—slow, sustained, unmonetized—feels quietly radical. To give a book your full attention is to reclaim time from the marketplace, to say: my consciousness is not for sale. Fiction, at its best, doesn’t compete for your attention; it transforms it. It doesn’t demand that you stay—it gives you a reason to want to.

So yes, publishing has learned to market its soul. But maybe that’s the paradoxical hope of art in a distracted age: even as the system sells us the simulation of desire, something real still gets through. Somewhere between the scroll and the sentence, the algorithm and the line break, the old human capacity for wonder flickers—briefly, stubbornly—back to life.

 

 

 

How do you think the publishing industry is adapting to the “attention economy,” and how do you feel about those shifts? Are books an antidote to shortening attention spans?

The simple answer, yes! Books are definitely an antidote to shortening attention spans, if they’re read in the traditional way. Now, hold on audio readers before you get your knickers in a twist. That was not a dig at people who choose to listen to their reading verses sitting down and cracking open a book. I do believe that listening to audio books count as reading. But when thinking about an increase in attention span, I believe taking that time to sit in one spot, completely focused on a world that you are creating with every word you read is training your attention span in way that few other activities can.

But let’s face it, as the world is constantly changing and expanding. So many of us have so little time that each second becomes more valuable, often-times leaving very little time or space for the leisurely activities we once loved, like reading. But I feel the publishing industry has taken note to adapt to this attention economy with a variety of ways to still enjoy good stories.

 Flash fiction, is one way that immediately comes to mind. It’s the amuse-bouche of the literary world. A perfect little bite of the story all done and dusted in one page, sometimes less, with a beginning middle and end. I find it fascinating and I’m often awestruck by some of the work that is accomplished in such a short space. If you haven’t ever checked any out, I highly recommend Lisa Ferranti, she’s been featured in multiple flash journals and won many contests. Her work is always thought-provoking with a lot of heart.

When I was growing up, I only had access to my local libraries with their glorious rooms filled with books upon books, paper back or hard-copy or comic, those were my choices. Now there are so many options with streaming, and gaming, and social media, there is a veritable mountain of choices, but never enough time.

The joys of the writter's life - by Harini Nagendra

Share a "hot take" about the book world? An opinion of yours that might be unpopular but is a hill you're willing to die on (at least for now).

Ok, here's mine - writing is not soul-suckingly awful, and the writer's lot is not a pitiable one. That is, writing is stressful in many ways, but it's far from the worst job out there - not in comparison with so many of the other, really challenging, unrewarding, thankless professions and jobs environments that helpless people are forced into, for all kinds of reasons.  

Writers choose to write because words dance in their head, stories fill their waking dreams, the books carve a path in their brain. It's certainly not easy to form sentences on paper, and shape them into a story. No creative process is easy. Writers spend hours staring at blank pages or blank screens, typing and erasing a sentence over and over, mired in writer's block, losing self confidence, battling impostor syndrome. All of this is true. 

But no one holds a gun to our head. If we write, it is because we choose to. There is joy in the creative process, fulfilment of a kind that is indescribable - but one that most people have experienced in some form or other. If you cook, bake, garden, embroider, knit, sew, paint, cut hair, make jewelry, do carpentry, build homes, apply makeup, design costumes, sets and landscapes, or do anything in the course of your daily life which involves creating something new - you know how good it feels to know that you created which bears your unique stamp - with all its imperfections, there's now something that exists in the world which would never have existed, in the exact same  manner, if it were created by anyone else but you. (Creative work heals wounds, and fills holes deep inside in a way that is frankly quite incredible, and there are reams of neuroscience research papers that document this.) 

Many (most) writers get paid a pittance for their efforts, as is the case with many artists and other folks in the creative profession. Yes, AI is coming for most of these jobs and may result in further exploitation. All of this is true, and sad, and angry-making, and terrible. Writing is also hard, stressful, and anxiety producing.   

But when I see some fora dominated by talk of how difficult it is to be a writer, with little discussion of the upside - saying only that the writer's life is a curse, agony, torment without end - it's hard not to point out that no one dragged us into this business, and no one keeps us here against our will. 

Indeed the luckiest part about being a writer is that you get to be your own boss: even if writing is only one of the many jobs you hold down, at least for a brief time and space, you get to be your own boss.

Nothing can quite replace the headiness of that experience. 

We're all very fortunate to be able to write, and to know that the universe has made some space for us to experience the magic of storytelling. That's my hot take, and I stand by it!

Publishing by the Numbers from James W. Ziskin

Share a "hot take" about the book world, an opinion of yours that might be unpopular but is a hill you're willing to die on (at least for now).

Not sure if this qualifies as a hot take or as an unpopular opinion, but I don’t understand how the publishing biz works. How do they manage to sell books on a large scale? They’ve obviously figured it out, right? Of course they have. They sell millions of books every year. Just not mine.

In general, I have trouble imagining large figures. When I see book sales numbers in the tens of thousands, or reviews on Goodreads and Amazon in the hundreds of thousands, my head spins. I simply don’t know how any book can sell so many copies. Yet plenty do. Who’s buying them? They say nobody reads anymore. Maybe nobody reads, but—apparently—they do buy books. 

While I don’t understand big numbers, I would like to have more money. Lots more money with lots of trailing zeros. And I’m not alone. In fact, millions of average citizens try their luck each week on the lottery, hoping to win enough money to live the lifestyle of the rich and tasteless. And that’s despite the infinitesimal odds of winning. The last time I bought a lottery ticket, of the six numbers drawn (five plus one “Powerball”), I matched none. Not one. Hell, I can’t even win a scented candle at a school fundraiser raffle, forget about the lottery. So if it’s that difficult to match one number—1 to 69–which doesn’t even win you a stick of gum, what chance do we have to hit all six and take home the jackpot? Seems impossible to me. And even if I were lucky enough to win several hundred million dollars in the lottery, I’d probably lock myself inside and never venture out again for fear that the universe would flatten me with a speeding bus just to even out the odds.

So I’ll never be a billionaire. That’s okay, since I can’t wrap my head around such wealth anyway. Have you ever stopped to consider that billionaires are worth at least one thousand millions of dollars? That’s $1 million a thousand times over. And that’s not even considering the super billionaires who have hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars to their name. Surely one would lose all sense of proportion if endowed with such a fortune. I mean, how much would a billionaire be expected to tip on a cup of coffee? Come on, at least a hundred dollars. Having a billion dollars must be similar to being incredibly tall. Imagine being thirty feet tall. How could you not look down on people? How could you possibly be normal? (Answer: billionaires are not normal and of course they look down on the little people.)

So, no. I don’t get big numbers. And that’s one of the reasons I don’t understand publishing. The logistics of distribution is another. And how they decide what to publish and how much to spend on promotion. Most of all, I’d like to know who is the fleeing woman they always photograph from behind on all those covers?

Okay, those are mysteries to me. But let’s talk about what the publishing industry could do to make me happier. Here are a couple of simple ideas.

1. Why don’t publishers sell e-books and audiobooks together? Or hardcover and e-books, for that matter? Make it a package deal. They could charge a little bit more and satisfy readers and writers alike.

2. And speaking of e-books, why don’t they sell them for $4.99? Or $5.99? Right now the hardcover edition of my last novel, Bombay Monsoon, sells for $12.99 on a certain online behemoth portal, while the e-book version sells for $9.99. That’s a mere three-dollar difference. Why not reduce the price of the e-book and sell more copies? Furthermore, the paperback is selling for $11.50. No wonder no one buys the e-book. 

For a reason I don’t understand, the e-book version of my third novel, Stone Cold Dead, sells for $11.99! Maybe people would buy it if it didn’t cost more than the trade paperback of Bombay Monsoon.

3. There must be some way to improve sales reports. I would wager a lot of money that no one’s royalty report is accurate. Of course we always have the option of paying for an audit of the reports, but really? Who has the money or patience to do that? And never mind that it would surely tick off your publisher who would probably never want to work with you again after that.

4.  Why do authors have to do all the publicity for their books? Or, if publishers abdicate the publicity portion of their duties to the author, shouldn’t the royalty rate be adjusted in favor of the author? Just a little?

5. Why is it verboten to use a font other than Times New Roman? I get that we don’t want Comic Sans, but wouldn’t Verdana be okay once in a while? 

6. By the way, does anyone really understand how paper is made? I mean how do they get the sheets of paper to line up perfectly? Do they pay some poor schlub to tamp the reams on a desktop a couple of times to even them out? And who winds toilet paper and paper towels around the rolls? That’s got to be a tedious job, though not one directly involved in publishing.

7. Finally, I’d like to know why publishers are sharing in the $1.5 billion copyright settlement from Anthropic? The books stolen do not represent lost sales. Or, rather, even if they did, then the publisher has lost out on a grand total of $9.99 for the e-book. That’s the sum of the damages. Anthropic only stole the book once, after all. The true injured parties here are the creators of the work. Anthropic used the authors’ stolen words and ideas, not the sheets of paper paid for by the publisher and tamped down on a desktop by some underpaid paper-straightener at Penguin Random House or Simon & Schuster. Writers could really use some of that relief. You’d think publishers would recognize that and forgo their share.

DISCLAIMER: If any publishing executive reads this post, please don’t hold the opinion expressed in point 7 above against me. An AI bot wrote this post.

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Spare Me

Share a "hot take" about the book world—an opinion that might be unpopular but is a hill you're willing to die on.

by Dietrich

There’s been a recent slew of celebrity memoirs and tell-alls: cheap, shiny and they read like they rolled off a conveyor belt. These obvious cash-grabs don’t seem written; more like they’re manufactured. The trauma within the pages feels curated, the redemption arc seems focus-grouped, and the only thing raw is the advance check. We’re told they're “a courageous tell-all,” yet they read more like monetized pain. Real courage? Refuse the seven-figure deal and let silence do the talking.

For the times I do get curious about a newly released tell-all, I ask myself two questions: Did the author discover something, or just deposit the check? And would I still care if I didn’t already know the name on the cover?

Of course, a blessed few memoirs and biographies bleed ink and can haunt you for weeks. Here are a few I think really earned their dust jackets:

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder – Salman Rushdie (2024) An unflinching memoir that recounts his near-fatal stabbing attack and his subsequent journey toward physical and psychological recovery. 

Ali: A Life – Jonathan Eig (2017) A deeply human portrait of Muhammad Ali, from his early days as Cassius Clay, moving beyond the boxing legend: flawed and fearless, world-shaking.

A Beautiful Mind – Sylvia Nasar (1998) An exploration into the intersection of genius and mental illness, chronicling John Nash's journey from a groundbreaking game theorist to a man tormented by delusions.

Black Elk Speaks – John G. Neihardt (1932) The life story and sacred visions of Nicholas Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota holy man, offers a moving account of his people's tragic history and cultural resilience during the twilight of the 19th century. 

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs – Ian Leslie (2025) Reimagining the Beatles' saga, an intimate portrait of Lennon and McCartney's profound and sometimes volatile creative bond—passion, jealousy and genius that fueled their iconic songwriting from teenage jam sessions to global stardom.

Becky Lynch: The Man – Rebecca Quin (2024) Dublin grit and WWE gold. Quin shows a lot of heart, hustle and humor as she unpacks the bruises, betrayals and triumphs behind her trailblazing persona.

Me, the Mob, and the Music – Tommy James (2009) This one recounts the chaos, triumphs, and near-fatal excesses that defined his rise to fame. A gripping behind-the-scenes look at the rock 'n' roll whirlwind of the 1960s. From the chart-topping highs to the lows of music mogul Morris Levy's ruthless control over his career.

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession – Michael FInkel (2023). It’s the true-crime chronicle of Stéphane Breitwieser’s brazen theft of over two hundred masterpieces worth over two billion—safely hidden in Mom’s attic.

I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas – Lewis Black (2010). Not exactly a memoir or a biography, it's a personal look at what’s wrong with Christmas as seen through the eyes the most pissed-off comedian alive, a guy who makes Scrooge look like he’s on decaf.

Newly released and on my TBR pile and just waiting to be read: Patti Smith’s Bread of Angels and Margaret Atwood’s Book of Lives.

Don't Ask

 

Terry here with our question of the week: Share a "hot take" about the book world?

My “hot take” in a few words: Publishers are only in it for the money. So what’s new? Everybody knows that. It’s been a long time since publishers were in the business of books because they love books. Writers look back with yearning to the days when publishers held the hands of their beloved writers, giving them advice, editorial assistance, and then free rein to write what they chose. They loved books. 

 If publishers are in the business to make money, how do they do it? It’s a crap shoot. They usually have no idea what is going to sell. By putting a lot of money into promotion, they can be sure they ones they’ve chosen get a leg up, but it’s never guaranteed. 

 I recently read this from Elle Griffen: “The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies.” 

 That’s a bleak assessment—and also true. There are some writers who make a living getting their books published. And there are writers who publish their own books and make a good living at it. But for every one of these there are hundreds of mid-list authors who barely make a few thousand dollars a year, after spending countless hours slaving over a manuscript. And then there’s a small percentage in that rarified atmosphere of “best sellers.” Usually they write damn good books. But I’ve also read a lot of mid-list work by writers whom I know cannot even approach making a living at it, and whose books are every bit as good. 

That’s the big frustration of the publishing world. The writer’s world is full of stories of those books that were passed up by one publisher after another until it was “spotted” by an astute editor, given the go-ahead by the reluctant publisher…and went on to sell zillions of copies. But how often does this really happen? So rarely, that for most of us, it isn’t even a pipe dream. It’s in the same category as finding out you’ve won the lottery. 

 If publishers are in it for the money, who loves books? Editors. Editors are the backbone of the publishing world, but they are still reliant on those who own the publishing house. They have to go armed with their best sales pitch to an editorial board to try to get the books they love accepted for publication. The editorial board answers to the publisher. 

 In the case of smaller publishing houses, often the “editorial board” is the publisher. No matter how much an editor loves a book, they had to get over that final hurdle. And the final hurdle is the question: will it make money? You are only as salable as your last books sales. When the sales “slip,” you are “slipped” off the books. It’s all about the bottom line. 

 If this sounds bitter, I don’t mean to be. I have been extremely fortunate. My first book was a resounding success and I have a solid following of those who come back for more—despite the number of really good books competing for their reading time. I was also lucky that when my publishing house got sold, I my series was picked up by another, larger publisher who has been a good partner. They even let me start a new series. So since 2013 I’ve had fourteen books published. And I’m proud of them. 

 The one place I haven’t been fortunate is in making the mistake of signing away my audio rights. There’s a reason my books aren’t on audio, despite the many readers who ask for them. The publishers own the audio rights and they aren’t giving them up “in case” an audio publisher purchases them. Not fair? Yep. But that’s the state of the publishing world these days. It’s all about the bottom line. 

 PS. I feel uneasy with the general state of publishing these days, hearing the dark rumblings that publishers may decide it’s cheaper to publish AI-written books than to keep doling out money to authors who sell fewer than 1,000 books. But writers gotta write. That’s our bottom line.

Countdown time: it's only 21 days until my next Samuel Craddock book comes out. The Curious Poisoning of Jewel Barnes makes it an even dozen. It's available for pre-order. 

A publishing "hot take" (in brief) - by Matthew Greene

Share a "hot take" about the book world, an opinion of yours that might be unpopular but is a hill you're willing to die on (at least for now).

A couple weeks ago, I took a nice, long train trip in two legs—New York to Chicago, then Chicago to Minneapolis. I must admit, one of my "happy places" in life is an Amtrak observation car where I can devour a good book while sipping snack bar chardonnay and munching on Skittles. (Underrated pairing, but I'm getting off the subject.) I'd packed a healthy stack of books for the journey, and as the trip wound down I was pleased to discover that the last of these books was a cool 252 pages. I had just enough time to breeze through it before I disembarked.

Which brings me to my "hot take," one that might draw the ire of writers and readers alike: most books are too long. Okay, allow me to clarify, because I don't think this is exclusive to the publishing world. I actually think most things are too long: movies, plays, podcast episodes, a limited mystery series where you have to make it through eight episodes to confirm the solution you'd figured out by the end of the pilot (not naming names), and the list goes on. 

Am I just telling on myself, using this blog post to publicly admit that my attention span is shrinking along with the rest of the world's? Maybe. I see the danger in making everything bite-sized, turning works of art into consumable content designed for an increasingly impatient populous. So, I'm balancing my appeal for brevity with an acknowledgment that books are a valuable antidote to the culture of instant gratification and dopamine addiction. But I think they could still serve that purpose if they were 10-15% shorter.

(Side note about a side quest...I was recently hired to write the screenplay for a "vertical mini drama," which is essentially a soap opera designed to watch on a phone screen in 60-second increments. That means a cliffhanger every minute! This is, arguably, too short. Let it be known that I'm not arguing that things be taken to that extreme!)

I know it would be easy to blame the authors for this. After all, we're the ones putting all those words on the page. But there seems to be an expectation (explicit of implicit) that anything less than 70,000 words isn't quite a "real book," that if the page count is under 300 most readers will be loath to pay full price. I know I'm speaking in broad generalities, and we could list exceptions to these rules all day. But suffice it to say, this isn't (simply) an issue of writers being long-winded or indulgent. It's all tied up with commerce, and I think that's a shame.

I should specify here that I primarily read mysteries and thrillers, as I think is true for a lot of us. My partner's fantasy and sci-fi collection strikes fear into my heart, just based on the width of the spines lining our bookshelves. Crime novels tend to be shorter, anyway, since there's a puzzle, a problem, or a paranoia that needs to power the narrative. (And cozies, as I know well, are allowed to be shorter, still.) But, I would argue, the unique expectations of this genre gives us all the more reason to embrace the thin volume!

Some stories—many, I would argue—don't need to be that long. I often find my attention flagging about fifty paged from the end of a book. Yes, I rally myself to forge ahead, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the premise or hook in the early chapters had just enough juice to keep me interested for a certain number of words/pages/hours. And often, I can feel that juice run out. In these moments, I find myself wondering if it was the author's choice to stretch a story concept beyond its natural capacity or if they felt pressured to do so by readers, editors, agents, etc. 

Or, as is certainly possible, I may just be wrong. I may be alone in feeling like most books would be stronger if they were fifty pages shorter. I may be in the market for a good novella. And—most frightening of all—I may be guilty of this myself with my current work in progress. 

That 252-page mystery that capped off my trip was exactly the right length, and I was grateful for that. Other books, of course, take longer to do justice to their stories. Hot takes aside, my sincere wish is that my fellow writers feel free to keep it brief, if that's what the story requires. 

And if you have any low-page-count, high-impact mysteries and thrillers to recommend, drop them in the comments below!

Wish Upon A Star by Poppy Gee

Since we just wrapped “spooky season,” do you subscribe to any writing superstitions? Any mythical or spiritual practices that help your process?

Coffee to start. After two hours, another coffee with a sweet treat such as cake, a nice biscuit or a piece of chocolate. These are not superstitions but a beautiful ritual which must be observed. Writing is such a pleasurable activity and it goes perfectly with coffee and cake. If I’m still writing at the four hour mark I definitely deserve a toasted cheese sandwich for lunch. If it’s a Friday I will buy myself something nice from the deli such as rice paper roll or a gourmet sandwich. In the late afternoon if I’m still writing, I have an apple cut into flat slices with pieces of cheese on it and a glass of sparkling mineral water. 

I'm not spiritual but clearly food motivated. Apart from that I have no other rituals, let alone superstitions, that help me with my writing. 

But this topic got me thinking. I love Halloween and we decorate our house, put out a big plastic bowl of candy, dress up and go trick or treating in our neighbourhood. This year my 9-year-old boy took charge of our decorations. We had a collection of skulls in the front yard with black rubber rats chewing on them, human bones poking out of my birds of paradise flowers, a ghost hanging from the pink trumpet tree, and witches hanging from the wraparound veranda of our Queenslander. We live in a very pretty area of timber cottages and tropical gardens and it’s lovely seeing the children running along the footpath with their friends in their adorable Halloween costumes. 

I used to like sharing pictures of this on social media. I don’t anymore and I don’t know if I ever will again. I know this is a terribly depressing thing to say but the reality is that since October 2023 my social media feed is full of so much death, dying and destruction that it feels ghoulish to share our fake bones and nightmarish decorations. 

I try to keep this blog upbeat but the truth is, life is not wonderful for many people, for different reasons, especially at the moment. 

Superstitions are rooted in ancient beliefs and fears, in times when people felt that there were greater powers controlling their lives. There’s no scientific proof behind common superstitions such as wishing on a shooting star or not walking under a ladder. Still, sometimes we find ourselves being mindful of superstitious traditions. Believing that there is something we can do to improve our luck, helps us feel a tiny bit more in control and gives us comfort in uncertainty. 

Maybe today is as good a day as any to wish on a shooting star. Let's try it!

All this and some eye of newt, by Catriona

Since we just wrapped “spooky season,” do you subscribe to any writing superstitions? Any mythical or spiritual practices that help your process?

Irrelevant but irresistible

Superstitious, moi? I'm the most rational person I know apart from my husband who is just as rational but can also build you a model of the cumulative probability of any set of related outcomes.

So, no way, I absolutely do not need to have a washed-up-on-the-beach brick penholder full of blue Bic Cristals on my desk and a spare packet of them in my drawer.

I certainly don't need a Tesco basic notebook for every year, counting summer to summer, to keep all my book thoughts in.

Nor do I need to have the book - title, plot, setting, characters - held absolutely secret from everyone until the first draft is finished. That's real diva behaviour. And if "everyone" includes the publisher who has already bought the novel, it verges on obnoxious.

Nor do I need to write it straight through without reading what I've written. That would be stupid. What if something slipped my mind? Imagine if I broke my arm and didn't write for a few weeks and then went back to my (top-secret) draft with a pen (blue Bic Cristal) and pad (Tesco) and I couldn't remember who the two people in the scene were and had to guess. How idiotic would that make me?

Idiotic enough to think that I need to print all drafts and keep them until the book is published? Because who needs trees? 

I wish I did have some superstitions. I'd be willing to sacrifice a few chickens (only crocheted ones, mind) to make sure that this idea I've had for a series doesn't get written by someone else before I can turn to it. A couple of times I've heard news items that seem to be such obvious springboards to my precious idea that I feel sick and hope no one else is listening. We'll see . . . 

Either I'll write it or I'll be in the corridors of Malice, Left Coast and Bouchercon in years to come, bearing down on unsuspecting first-time attendees, who'll ask "What's that round your neck? Is that some kind of crocheted bird? Hey! Hold off, unhand me, grey-beard loon."

Fingers crossed,

Cx

Not-so-super stitions by Eric Beetner

 Since we just wrapped "spooky season," do you subscribe to any writing superstitions? Any mythical or spiritual practices that help your process?

Superstitions are loosely defined, I've found. Do I have habits? Sure. Preferred processes? Yes, indeed. Nothing I'd call a superstition, though.

I've written all of my books at the same desk. Does that mean I would suddenly freeze up if I moved to a different space? Doubtful (not that I'm going to test the spiritual waters) I write with the same word processing program, the same font, the same spacing. All of this could be considered a superstition, if I were so inclined. As a Atheist and someone not comfortable with any of the woo-woo stuff surrounding things like astrology, religion, good or bad luck, I don't see any of it as 100% crucial to my process.

I have mixed things up now and then. When writing a particularly dark screenplay once, I broke my general habit of writing in silence and I wrote to a very dark soundtrack of instrumental music. Did it truly change how the project came out? Not sure.

I intentionally change up small things about books from time to time simply to stop myself from being repetitive. There is an entire book where I never used speech tags. No he said or she said. Not a one. Still odd to me that nobody has ever seemed to notice they were missing. At least nobody mentioned it, ever. Small tricks like that, or even just moving from first to third person, mixes up the rhythm of the writing so the next book doesn't sound exactly like the last book.

On the flip side of that is books in a series where I WANT them to sound and read similar, means keeping the same set of parameters when I write. This doesn't mean burning the same scented candle, though.

Mostly I rely on my past writing, my experience in putting down hundreds of thousands of words. I believe in practicing my craft more than any secret mojo to make the words flow. I do find that new writers are very often looking for a secret or a trick to making the work easier. If you find something that gives you that placebo effect and you call it superstition, then by all means, keep doing it.

I will say this, any writing session is made discernibly better when one of my dogs sits with me. I was worried when my dog Maybel passed away after my fifth novel. I worried that she was my secret talisman, my muse with a smooth red coat. It turned out, she was merely a faithful companion who put me at ease and never complained when I focused on the keyboard for hours instead of scratching her ears. She was the closest I ever came to a superstition. In the end, she was just a good girl. 

Hearts and Minds Before Hashtags

Winning “hearts and minds” began long before hashtags — and the first battlefield wasn’t online. It was psychological, political, and deeply human.

In Eyes to Deceit, I wanted to explore the summer when America learned to bend truth into strategy. In 1953, Operation Ajax toppled Iran’s democratically elected government — a covert success that would echo for decades. Behind the cables and code names were men who believed they were defending democracy, even as they dismantled it. That paradox — belief turning to betrayal — sits at the heart of this novel.

Walker, my protagonist, begins as the archetypal Cold War idealist — young, patriotic — but when his mission turns inward and the line between loyalty and deceit blurs, he discovers that the war for “truth” has casualties you can’t see on a map.

The world that ensnares Walker was built by real men — architects of secrecy whose power outlived their era. The Dulles brothers, Kermit Roosevelt, Norman Darbyshire — they built the template for modern information warfare. The stories they told the world, and themselves, changed history.

Allen Dulles, the CIA’s first civilian director, was both architect and evangelist of this new power. Under his watch came coups in Iran, Guatemala, and elsewhere — each justified by the same gospel of containment and control. Dulles believed secrecy was strength, that moral clarity could be manufactured like a headline. His downfall after the Bay of Pigs ended his official reign, but not his influence: even in retirement, he remained a presence in Washington’s shadows, summoned back after Kennedy’s assassination to help investigate the very government he had shaped.

My novel opens with Walker visiting Harry Truman, who warns him about Dulles and the agency he built.

Truman himself had grown uneasy about what the CIA had become. In an extraordinary op-ed published in The Washington Post exactly one month after Kennedy’s assassination, he warned that the agency he’d founded for intelligence-gathering had strayed into “peacetime cloak and dagger operations.”

If Dulles weaponized secrecy, Edward Bernays taught the world how to weaponize perception. Often called the “father of public relations,” Bernays was Sigmund Freud’s nephew and Madison Avenue’s first modern manipulator. His 1928 book Propaganda was a manual for shaping opinion in mass democracies — and it influenced everyone from corporate America to Joseph Goebbels. In the 1920s, “propaganda” wasn’t a dirty word. It was seen as a tool — neutral, even noble — for engineering consent. Bernays made influence sound like innovation.

One of Bernays’s most infamous campaigns came in 1929, when he helped the American Tobacco Company convince women that smoking was a symbol of independence. He branded cigarettes as “Torches of Freedom” and staged a photo op of debutantes lighting up during New York’s Easter Parade. The event was hailed as a feminist milestone — and cigarette sales soared. It was propaganda rebranded as progress, and it worked.

For Walker, Bernays’s world of engineered consent becomes a mirror. He learns that the same techniques used to sell cigarettes or shape headlines can also sell a war — and that belief, once manipulated, becomes its own form of captivity.

The legacy of both men endures. Today’s disinformation campaigns, digital PSYOPs, and algorithmic echo chambers all trace their DNA to that mid-century faith in narrative control. The tools have changed. The impulse — to mold belief, to weaponize a narrative — has not.

Before hashtags, there were headlines. Before algorithms, there were men like Dulles and Bernays — shaping what the world would believe.

In Eyes to Deceit, Walker discovers what that belief costs — not just for nations, but for the people who carry its weight. The lies of power have always worn the language of purpose — and his story reminds us how easily that language can sound like truth.

Fiction can’t fix history.
But sometimes it can make us feel the cost of forgetting.

For readers who want to dig deeper into the history behind the story, I recommend the documentary Coup 53 from director Taghi Amirani with editor Walter Murch, and Stephen Kinzer’s book All the Shah's Men.

Eyes to Deceit is available November 4, 2025, from Level Best Books at Amazon or your bookseller of choice.

 

 

 

 

Where's Jimmy Fallon when you need him?

 

Since we just wrapped “spooky season,” do you subscribe to any writing superstitions? Any mythical or spiritual practices that help your process?

 This is a strangely difficult post to write. Mainly, because I’ve kind of lost my writing way and thinking about my writing routine is shing a megawatt light on the reason why.  I don’t know that I have any writing superstitions, necessarily, but definitely routines that I’ve followed, more or less, since writing my first book. Well, not everything has survived the journey. Somewhere along my writing path, I stopped listening to Jimmy Fallon in the background and replaced him with whatever music matches the mood of the piece I’m working on. Right now, Luther Vandross radio, is playing softly in the background. Always a dangerous choice, since I love so much of his music that there is a huge chance of being distracted.

But regardless of the artist or genre, music is always a thing. I also always write in the same place. I used to write at the same time too, but as I mentioned, I’ve strayed from the path of my old faithful routine, where I would show up at the appointed time, turn on the selected music, and write until my time is up. That’s it, that’s the routine. Sometimes, if I felt like I had an especially successful session, I’d even share a bit on my social media.

But I’m afraid, the stress of worrying about the state of our collective existence, including work, caring for my family, feeding my cats, and my job, had hindered all my creative efforts. Shame on me. So maybe it’s time for a new routine that looks a lot like my old routine. Show up. Turn on the music, or even Jimmy Fallon. Write something, anything. Rinse and repeat.

Results May Vary from James W. Ziskin

How do you find a balance - if you try for balance - between the overly neat bow at the end of the book and the potentially unsatisfying open end. Is it easier in crime fiction than other genres? 

Great question this week. I believe the answer (s) depends (depend) on the work you’re writing. There are times when we crave the restoration of order in the fiction we consume. Other times, we like to be left hanging, perhaps as a come-on for a sequel. Or maybe just a murky conclusion that gives us pause. Makes us think about the complexities of life, justice, and neat bows. I like that sometimes. Like Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. Or my Puccini portrait below.

In my own books, the ending definitely depends on the story, the mood, and the message—if any—that I’m trying to write. If it’s a puzzle mystery, I will probably want all the loose ends tied up and no questions left unanswered. After all, who would want to assemble a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle on their dining table, only to leave the last five pieces in the box? We want closure in a mystery novel or story, otherwise it’s like an itch that we don’t get to scratch, a piece of bubble wrap that we don’t get to pop, or a dream from which we wake too soon. A mystery story that doesn’t resolve the mystery is like a championship game without a winner.

A love story, on the other hand, might survive an ambiguous ending, especially if there’s a promise of more lovin’ an’ kissin’ in a sequel down the road. And what about a literary novel? It’s not high art if it’s simple, is it? It has to be confusing and oblique or it’s offal. And awful. Yes, ambiguous, unresolved, incomplete are the hallmarks of true genius. No pedestrian happy endings, no thank you. The same way we don’t want our eyeglasses to give us clear vision. 

Or maybe murky endings are just poetic. We like poetic, don’t we? Poetic is deep. Much better than pat, I aver. Or is it…. (See how I created ambiguity there? Brilliant!)

When it comes to endings, one can make the argument both ways, of course, just as sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. It could be that something deep inside human beings desires variety and change, not always order. A little bit of chaos, too. That’s why we don’t read the same book over and over. Or eat the same meal again and again. Even your favorite food gets dull if you never give it a rest. And NOBODY can listen to the Kars4Kids jingle once—let alone multiple times—without begging for Death’s sweet sting to get that f^@%&! tune out of your head.

But again, what about my own novels and stories? Thinking back on my Ellie Stone books, I’d say they have “satisfying” conclusions to the main plot lines. Backstory and secondary concerns may be left dangling, but never the question of whodunnit. My Bombay Monsoon thriller, however, leaves the reader to draw some conclusions about how things will play out after the curtain has fallen. In fact, I started to write a sequel to that book in order to deal with the aftermath, but I eventually abandoned it. I felt the continuation of the story would only dilute it.

My next book, THE PRANK (July 2026) has an ending that… Oh, no. I’m not sharing that yet. You’ll have to read it when it comes out. But I will say it would be a perfect example for discussion of this week’s topic.

And short stories? Mine tend to wrap things up tidily. But other writers? Results may vary.

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Lknkhdgs

Making Ends Meet

How do you strike a balance between a tidy, predictable ending and one that’s so open-ended it might leave readers hanging? Is it easier to pull this off in crime fiction compared to other genres?

by Dietrich

Crafting a satisfying ending is one of the trickier parts of writing. I often scratch my head tying up loose ends in a way that feels earned while leaving just enough wiggle room to spark the reader’s imagination. A neat, happy resolution might hit the spot for some fans craving closure, but it can feel too perfect for others, like life doesn’t work that way. I think the sweet spot lies somewhere between a polished bow and an open end that leaves folks scratching their heads.

A tidy ending might feel like a warm hug for some readers—everything wraps up with harmony and emotional payoff. But if it’s too clean, it risks undermining the story’s depth, making things feel too convenient.

Crime fiction, with its built-in structure, often makes this balancing act easier if you ask me. A story centered on a mystery—like a classic whodunit—offers a clear framework for resolution. Solving the case delivers a natural endpoint, satisfying the reader’s need for answers without having to wrap up every character’s personal drama. Take Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express: the mystery gets solved, but the moral grayness of the solution lingers, nudging readers to wrestle with questions of justice. This setup lets a writer nail closure on the main plot while leaving side threads—like the protagonist’s personal struggles—open for future stories, especially in a series.

On the flip side, an open-ended conclusion might leave some plot points dangling, which can frustrate readers who are dying for answers. But when done well, it sparks reflection and keeps the story alive in the reader’s mind, inviting discussion long after the last page. The trick here is matching the ending to the story’s overall vibe.

Some of my favorite authors nailed endings in their own special ways. Elmore Leonard had a knack for endings that flipped expectations with dark humor and irony. His criminals rarely got poetic justice—instead, their schemes often imploded in absurd, almost inevitable ways. George V. Higgins, with his dialogue-driven stories, mimicked real criminal banter, leading to payoffs steeped in irony: nobody wins, and his imaginary web of crime trapped everyone, exposing corruption without a lot of tidy resolutions.

George Pelecanos often blends gritty violence with quiet redemption. His endings lean on community over individualism, resolving ensemble tensions with hard-earned hope. Patricia Highsmith loved leaving readers unsettled, dodging clear justice or redemption. Her morally complex characters delivered endings that lingered with ambiguity, challenging the usual crime-story wrap-ups. And another favorite author, Charles Willeford went for shock, often tossing redemption out the window for absurd comeuppance, mirroring life’s raw unpredictability.

Ultimately, choosing the right ending is about knowing your audience and honoring the story’s emotional contract. Blending just enough resolution with a touch of ambiguity keeps the story alive in readers’ heads, steering clear of the overly neat bow or the frustratingly vague fade-out.