Chris Roerden - Don’t Murder Your Mystery!

>On May 24th, 2007 at 8PM EDT Irene Watson and Victor R. Volkman spoke with Chris Roerden, an Agatha-award winning author and editor with more than four decades of experience.  Her latest book is called Don’t Murder Your Mystery: 24 Fiction Writing Techniques To Save Your Manuscript From Turning Up D.O.A.  She shared invaluable tips on how not to submit a manuscript, how to work with an editor, and many classic mistakes made on the first page and first chapter that turn a possibly good book into unreadable mush.  Not just for Mystery writers, this is a must for all fiction writers.

She’s edited authors who’ve been published by St. Martin’s Press, Berkley Prime Crime, Rodale, Viking, Walker, Midnight Ink, and many smaller presses, as well as authors who’ve self-published. Altogether, she’s had a hand in their winning 22 awards. In addition to editing, she’s written 10 books and a game, all but two of those commissioned by others. Chris received her Master’s in English from the University of Maine. The faculty invited her to stay on as a teacher of nonfiction writing. In the mid-nineties she introduced the first series of classes in publishing at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and taught in the continuing education program for 8 years. At the time Chris was also president of MidAmerica Publishers Association (or MAPA), a regional trade association for publishers founded by John Kremer. Chris also served 6 years on the southeast regional board of directors of Mystery Writers of America. Listen to the PodCast!

This entry was posted on May 25, 2007 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Genres, Book Development, Guests. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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