Matthew Iden's Blog, page 2

Friends – You may have heard already, but Christmas came early this year for me: Amazon’s mystery imprint Thomas & Mercer recently acquired all five books in the Marty Singer series! This means great things may lie ahead and I have YOU–colleagues and authors as well as fans and readers of the series–to thank for ... [Read more...]

A NEW BOOK! Autumn, my favorite season, is running out the door with Winter fast behind it, but that just means more opportunities to read as the sun sets earlier and there are darn few reasons to go outside. Speaking of reading, I’ve just released a new (non-Marty Singer) book, Stealing Sturgis on Amazon.com. It’s an Elmore Leonard-esque ... [Read more...]

An inspiring post from crazy-productive indie novelist Russel Blake. Read it all! My favorite is Tip #10: The power of questions: Ask yourself, “How can I make this the best chapter I have ever written, and be excited and have…Read more ›

I was reading about the death of bookstores and the lamentation of the masses, who will no longer have a place to meet, talk, and browse novels before going home and buying them on Amazon. Someone mentioned libraries should take…Read more ›

I was recently invited to take part in a very cool website, PlacingLiterature.com, where authors (and readers) are encouraged to map each scene of their books on a real-world map. The map is integrated with every other entry, so you can see CJ Lyons’s cool settings outside of my boyhood home, Pittsburgh, or even historical […]

Speed I had a conversation recently with some indie writer friends and we were comparing notes on how to write faster and better. Two of them are following a particular method (Book in a Month) that shuts off your inner editor and gets down to the nuts and bolts of putting words on a page. […]

Nice little round-up of blogs authors of all stripes, indie and trad alike, should be following. By Mick Rooney,   http://www.theindependentpublishingma... under: Epublishing News

A nice little observation in the Harvard Business Review combining Anthony Bourdain, business, and–in my case–writing. First found on The Passive Guy, but visit HBR for the original! How to Spend the First 10 Minutes of Your Day by Ron Friedman  |   8:00 AM June 19, 2014 If you’re working in the kitchen of Anthony Bourdain, […]

As a member of the mystery writers group Sister in Crime (SinC, for short), I receive a monthly email update called Sinc Links, a kind of round-up of things that affect the publishing and writing world in general, and mystery writers in particular. Many indie authors (myself included) are members of SinC. So I was surprised […]

Some readers have expressed disappointment/concern that there’s “less Marty” in the latest book, The Wicked Flee. I’ve put together an elucidation of why I did what I did that might help explain things, including some tricks of the trade that I employed to put some spice in the book. Check it out and feel free […]