By Isabella Maldonado The FBI National Academy is an advanced course for law enforcement executives from around the world. For approximately three months, over 200 men and women move into college-style dorms at the FBI training campus at Quantico.  The academic portion of the program is rigorous, requiring attendees to take classes, undergo exams, and submit theses at a university level. Successful graduates receive 17 hours of credit from the University of Virginia. Several years ago, when I was a captain in my department, I was selected for this prestigious program. Since the training ..read more

By Z.J. Czupor On Tour with Dead Writers is Z.J. Czupor‘s new installment on Rogue Women Writers. Guess the correct dead writer to be entered to win a free book. This oak chair was designed in the early 1900s by the husband of this famous author of mysteries. In fact, according to a book about the Art Nouveau furniture maker, it credits the mystery author as a collaborator in her husband’s works. The chair is on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. This author’s debut novel was the first to establish the “whodunit” and the idea that “everyone and nobody” is a suspect. Further, bec ..read more

By Karna Small Bodman Our Naples Public Library hosts four best-selling fiction authors a year at luncheons that draw some 600 readers and are major fund-raisers for the library. At one, the speaker was Pam Jenoff. Her latest book is Code Name Sapphire: A World War 2 Novel. Inspired by a true story, it features a woman who must rescue a family from a train bound for Auschwitz. In the process, she joined the Sapphire Line, a secret resistance network.  During her talk, Pam told us what she went through when she started writing. She wrote her first book and mailed out 100 “query” letter ..read more

Dispatches from the Desk By Tracy Clark I’ve heard stories of writers stopping two-thirds into a novel and shredding the whole thing because they weren’t happy with what they’d written. I’ve heard stories of writers who have finished an entire book, submitted it, and then asking their editor to toss it in favor of something else they’d rather write, something presumably better. I’ve even heard stories of writers who have dumped an unfinished manuscript into a dark drawer proclaiming it unsalvageable, only to start a new project that could end up right beside the unsalvageable one. I gasped eac ..read more

It’s a Rogue Roundup: See what we Rogues discovered, researched, and talked about in March… Alex Kava, NY Times bestselling author, sprung us into March with five author podcasts she uses for inspiration, tips, and tricks. Discover what makes them so great by starting with her favorite episodes of each. Next, we take a step back through time with Once Upon a Villa, the new memoir from Andrew Kaplan, who is widely know as a best-selling author of the spy thrillers. He’s gone rogue in his memoir by genre jumping to the romantic adventures of his time spent writing on the French Riveria ..read more

By Chris Goff Officially, Spring began on March 19th and, if I’m being honest, it’s beautiful in Western Michigan. We moved here a year ago and I’m still acclimating. The transition from Coloradan to Michigander has been more difficult than I ever imagined. I am a mountain girl at heart. I grew up in the hills west of Denver, lived nearly 20 years in the high country, and I loved it there. The sunshine, the snow, the mountains, skiing, the summers. But, I have to admit, Western Michigan is growing on me. I had little idea what to expect. Circumstances forced the move, and I was heartbroken t ..read more

By Z.J. Czupor On Tour with Dead Writers is Z.J. Czupor‘s new installment on Rogue Women Writers. Guess the correct dead writer of Westerns and Suspense Thrillers to be entered to win a free book. This famous author of mysteries, thrillers, and westerns once worked for an ad agency in this building, which at the time was the headquarters for General Motors in Detroit, Michigan from 1923 to 2001. Now known as Cadillac Place, the complex houses several Government of Michigan agencies. Cadillac Place was renamed in tribute to Detroit’s founder, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac. Photo ..read more

By Lisa Black Way back in the dark ages before personal computers on every desk and watching TV on your smartphone, in 1983, Ronald Reagan talked about starting the Strategic Defense Initiative. A bunch of satellites would float around in space and shoot down any missiles incoming from Russia and China. Everyone promptly named it Star Wars. A new form of Star Wars figures heavily into the plot of my new book, The Deepest Kill. It never came into being, largely because detecting and tracking missiles from outer space so that they can be picked off in the sky like a game of Asteroids is not as ..read more

Once Upon a Villa By Andrew Kaplan I actually wrote the first draft of my about-to-be-released new book, Once Upon a Villa, after I hadn’t written anything in a very long time. Years. I wasn’t sure if I still knew how to write. So rather than try to write one of my spy thrillers, where I would have to come up with a plot that would sell and figure out chapter by chapter what comes next, I decided to write a memoir of what in retrospect was an extraordinary, almost magical time in our lives when we lived on the French Riviera. I wouldn’t have to come up with a plot. I would just write down wha ..read more

By Alex Kava Writing a novel is a solitary endeavor, but sometimes it helps to hear how other authors deal with the same challenges. Plus, we all could use a little inspiration once in a while.  Here are five of my favorite podcasts offering conversations, information and a whole lot of inspiration about writing and publishing. #1: The Creative Penn with Joanna Penn Look up any lists of podcasts about writing, and you’ll most likely find The Creative Penn in the top five. Joanna Penn is a New York Times bestselling and award-nominated author. She calls herself a creative entrepreneu ..read more