For the past 7 years, I’ve had the privilege of putting together a roundtable discussion between the nominees for the Edgar and other MWA awards, with predictably spectacular (and somewhat long-winded) results, necessitating the result of publishing the collated responses in two parts. This year had the most contributors yet, and may be my favorite conversation thus far (I know, I say that every year).
In part one of the roundtable discussion, I asked authors to discuss craft, reading habits, old favorites, and the evolution of genre. In part two, running tomorrow, you’ll find a discussion more focused on issues: social, political, financial, and as of the recent rise of AI, technological. 29 nominees and special award winners contributed to the following discussion, for an interview that reads as a snapshot of an entire community at an inflection point in history.
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What is your writing routine?
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David Lewis (nominated for Best First Novel – A Jewel in the Crown) Wake up early – I have a cat. Fight with cat about getting up so early—and lose. Feed cat. Make coffee. Sit at computer, bring up current document and write.
Nathan Ashman (nominated for Best Critical/Biographical – James Sallis: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction): Procrastinate until the spectre of the deadline looms horrifyingly on the horizon. Panic. Write in a febrile frenzy. Submit (wishing I’d started earlier). Repeat.
Jacqueline Winspear (nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award – The Comfort of Ghosts): For over 25 years it was quite specific—at my desk by 8:30am at the latest, then write until about 1:00pm. Morning has been for writing, afternoon for “admin” and evening for research/reading, with a break at lunchtime to ride my horse (I train in the equestrian sport of dressage daily). Now I’ve changed that system. I have had a job of one sort or another since childhood, sometimes more than one job—as anyone who has read my memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing will know—so this year, because I reach a landmark age (during Edgars week, no less), here’s my writing schedule: When I Feel Like It. Fortunately, I feel like writing almost every day, but I don’t kick myself if I want to do something else with my precious hours.
Sarah Easter Collins (nominated for Best Novel – Things Don’t Break On Their Own): I write seven days a week, and I am very much an early morning writer. While I was writing Things Don’t Break On Their Own, I was getting up at four or five in the morning, and then creeping downstairs to write. I did have company: my elderly lurcher Siddley was by my side from the very first word to the last. By mid-afternoon my brain is usually fried, and I need to go and do other things! We live in a national park, and I use long walks on the moor to solve plot problems and plan the next day’s work.
Joanna Schaffhausen (nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award – All the Way Gone): I don’t write most of the year. I think about my next book and I do some research. When I’m actively writing, I try for about 2,000 words per day, Monday through Friday, which means I go from zero to 100,000 words in about twelve weeks.
Tom Ryan (nominated for the Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award – The Treasure Hunter’s Club): I’m a creature of habit. I do my best writing in the morning, and ideally I’m at my desk with coffee in hand and my internet blocker (a necessity) engaged by 7:30. I spend a lot of time plotting, and when I start a new book, there’s usually a two-month period where I work out the mechanics of the story, organize and prearrange as much as possible, and build a solid road map to guide the process. Once that foundation is in place, it typically takes me about three or four months to write a solid first draft. When I’m drafting I write each day until I hit 2,000 words, and I thank Stephen King and his brilliant memoir ‘On Writing’ for helping me establish that habit!
Isabella Maldonado (nominated for Best Paperback Original – A Forgotten Kill): During the first draft, I “pre-write” before I begin to formally write. I use a digital notecard to sketch out what needs to happen in the scene. My brain needs a jumping off point before getting into the flow, then the story takes me where it will. Many times, an idea will occur to me while I’m working through the prose that turns out to make the scene come together in a much better way than I had originally planned. To quote painter Bob Ross, these are “happy accidents” and must be embraced.
A fun tool I use is “dream-casting” my story. Since I write in multiple points of view, I search for actors who embody the appearance and persona of the characters that populate my story world, then put their pictures on my screen to keep me grounded in each person’s voice as I switch.
Frank Figliuzzi (nominated for Best Fact Crime – Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers) : As a general rule, if I’m working on a book, I’ll commit at least a portion of each day to writing. I’ll often set an objective to work on a particular chapter or a particular research aspect, or story element for that day. However, with some frequency, I’ll feel inclined or inspired to shift my objective to another story element once I get started. I take deliberate breaks from this routine, perhaps taking a day or weekend off, because I find that time away from the writing spurs creativity and new ideas for the book. In each of my two books, I have traveled away from home for a week or two in order to avoid distractions and to focus entirely on finishing particularly challenging portions of the book – or even, finally finishing the book in those remote locations. For me, those locations have been at or near a beach because my best ideas seem to be generated while walking on the beach in the mornings, before I begin writing for the day.
Kimberly Belle (nominated for Best Paperback Original – The Paris Widow): I write best in the morning and in a quiet and empty house, but a few years ago, I discovered by accident that where I really gain traction is when writing two stories at once–my next solo novel along with a co-authored one. I don’t know what it is exactly about this combination. Switching back and forth between the stories so I never get bored of either, the accountability and camaraderie of weekly Zooms with my co-authors, two deadlines rather than one looming above my head? Whatever it is, I always catch momentum at some point early in the process, and I’m able to power through both stories faster than I ever could have done alone. For me, there’s something magical about it.
Erika Krause (nominated for Best Short Story – “Eat My Moose,” Conjunctions: 82, Works & Days): I’m allergic to routines, but I definitely have a process: I research whatever I’m interested in, vomit my ideas into a big file, make an outline, organize it all into Scrivener, and then begin writing scenes. I usually do all this when I’m supposed to be doing something else, and I get a lot done by shirking my responsibilities. Once the story starts getting halfway decent, I begin to write in obsessive binges that last up to 14 hours a day. This isn’t a sane approach, and I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone.
Audrey Lee (nominated for Best First Novel – The Mechanics of Memory): I’m an early bird. After my first cup of coffee and the New York Times crossword, I’m usually writing by 5:00 am. I used to be a teacher, and so by 3:00 pm my brain has given up. I write every day (including weekends) and aim for two thousand words each day.
Kelley Armstrong (nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award – Disturbing the Dead): I’m very methodical in my routine. I’ve been doing this for a very long time, so I’ve settled into a rhythm that works for me. I’m usually writing one book while editing another. Mornings are for editing. Afternoons are writing, where I join other authors online and get my 2K done in two hours of sprints. Then, if needed, the business and marketing fall in after that.
Katie Tietjen (nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award – Death in the Details): I do most of my writing early in the morning before anyone else at my house is awake. Part of this is practical (I have to get out the door early for my job), but I also really enjoy this quiet, solitary time where it’s just me, my fictional friends, and my cat trying to sit on my keyboard.
Liz Moore (nominated for Best Novel – The God of the Woods): When I’m in the generative phase of a novel, I wake up at 5:30 a.m., make a cup of coffee, and write in my basement for about two hours. I do this every weekday until I have a complete manuscript. When I’m in a revision stage, I’m more flexible about when I write.
Ayla Rose (nominated for the Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award – Murder on Devil’s Pond): Morning, the earlier the better, preferably before my inner critic is awake, is my favorite time to write. I sit at the kitchen table, which faces our flower gardens, the bird feeders, and the woods beyond, and try to finish pages before coworkers discover I’m up. I have a demanding full-time job and an active family life, so I have to write whenever I can make time. This often means binge writing–especially when a deadline looms–during weekends and vacations. By evening, my creativity has worn thin, so I save nights for returning emails, social media, and other administrative tasks.
Ian Moore (nominated for the Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award – Death and Fromage): I used to write from very early in the morning until lunchtime. I live in France, so lunchtime is the end of the working day as any work after that is either impossible or unusable.
Then we got a puppy.
So then I started writing from mid-morning, after a walk, until lunchtime. Then, thanks to health issues, I needed to factor in exercise in the morning because after lunch it would be worthless.
Basically, now, I write when I can and if I ever get stuck, I get on a train as movement really helps. I’ve also had to cut down on lunch.
Charlotte Vassell (nominated for Best Novel – The In-Crowd): I generally don’t work very well in the morning, so I try to get the mundanities of life out of the way early otherwise I’ll dither thinking about them, and won’t focus. I have small children and work around them. I often find myself to be at my most productive between 8pm and 12pm once they’re in bed.
Bonnie Kistler (nominated for Best Paperback Original – Shell Games): None. No daily word count. No set schedule. I only write when the urge is upon me. The story is always running in my head, and when the right words rise up to match the reel, I sit down and put them to screen. I never force the words to come. So-called “vomit drafting” results in exactly that.
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson (nominated for Best Paperback Original – The Road to Heaven): I write for an hour every morning from 6.30-7.30 while I eat my first breakfast — three pieces of fruit and a coffee — before leaving for work. I’ve always been a morning person, and so waking up isn’t difficult, and I love the clarity early in the day, before the demands of the world become too loud.
As I’ve had a little more success, I’ve found that some days I need to spend time on administrative tasks and not just writing and editing. But when I’m writing I aim to produce 1000 words a day. That’s a fair amount to write in an hour, but steady training has worked me up to that level. I also believe in momentum: if I am working on a project I like to work quickly and get to the end, especially when it is a longer project like a novel.
Writing quickly, means there is an extensive editing process, and sometimes, for weeks, or even months on end, I am mired in rewrites and edits. Sometimes I worry that all these revisions are like the baker who overworks their dough. I wonder if my system could be better if I worked more slowly and edited less. But I think I may be stuck with what I have.
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What is your preferred writing instrument?
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Erika Krause: A sledgehammer. Just kidding—a computer.
Kerri Hakoda (nominated for Best First Novel – Cold to the Touch): Pilot Rollerball G-2 0.7 fine point, and my Dell laptop.
Mindy Mejia (nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award– A World of Hurt): The uni-ball Vision Elite pen, which has perfect ink flow and line width without any page bleed or drips. Not that you asked, but my least favorite writing instrument is a Sharpie. When did Sharpies become the default book signing implement? I always feel like a 5yo working on some doomed art project.
Pat Gaudet (nominated for the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award – “The Legend of Penny and the Luck of the Draw Casino,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May-June 2024): Pen and loose-leaf paper, up until arthritis bullied its way on the scene. The last few years I’ve written on my laptop. But lately I’m being drawn back to the old-school method. It’s immediately mobile (just pick up a pen, paper, and go). And it’s slower, which makes me a little more creative I think.
David Lewis: Instruments, plural. First, research, which involves creating a bank of information by writing found information on a legal pad. Next, again on a legal pad I write notes, thoughts, and a basic outline of a chapter. Last, take the notes, outline, etc., and write the chapter on my computer. Once the novel is finished, it gets put away for a month or two before revisiting to rewrite.
Tom Ryan: I crack open a new notebook every time I begin writing a new book, and I use it to keep track of ideas and write character sketches, etc… but it’s my MacBook Air and Scrivener that I rely on the most. I don’t know how anyone wrote a novel before Scrivener – I can’t imagine a more perfectly designed software!
Henry Wise (nominated for Best First Novel – Holy City): A Royal typewriter from 1920 that I inherited. I handwrite in the first stages of drafting, but all my rough drafts end up being written on the typewriter.
Audrey Lee: I am old school. I can edit on a laptop, but I have a much harder time creating. I write on a desktop PC, in Word, sitting at my desk with two HUGE monitors and my dog in my lap.
Ayla Rose: My MacBook! I have a clickety keyboard that I love—its sound and feel are reminiscent of a typewriter—and when I’m alone (it’s noisy!), I pair it with my computer. If I’m struggling with a storyline, or if I’m trying to brainstorm ideas, I use pen and paper. Something about writing longhand helps to wipe away the cobwebs and foster creativity.
Michelle Chouinard (nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award – The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco): I write on a laptop computer, and I use Scrivener software. I honestly don’t know how people write novels without it! It allows me to structure and outline in an intuitive way that’s easy to modify as I go along without losing my mind.
Sarah Easter Collins: I write on a desktop Mac that has a fairly large screen. I like that I can have several windows open at once: my manuscript, my research, perhaps an image or two. When I was writing Things Don’t Break On Their Own, the scenes that were the most challenging to write – and the most fun – were those set at the dinner party. That scene is retold throughout the book from the viewpoint of different characters, and with each retelling something new is revealed. I was using the Rashomon effect to put different words and phrases into the mouths of my characters with each retelling, and at one point I think I had five versions of that scene up on my screen at once, so I could constantly check on what each character had said in a previous iteration. I could not have done that on a tiny screen! Meanwhile I write poetry by hand, using any paper that comes to hand, often the back of my diary.
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What’s on your TBR list?
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Kimberly Belle: One of the best perks of the Killer Author Club, an author interview series and podcast I co-host with fellow crime authors Heather Gudenkauf and Kaira Rouda, is that we get our hands on early reads. In our two-plus years on the air, we’ve interviewed some of the genre’s greats, but we also interview up-and-coming authors who are making big marks in the industry. Emily Carpenter was just on with her latest, Gothictown, for instance, and we’ve got Clemence Michallon’s Our Last Resort coming up later this year. Both authors are so talented!
Michelle Chouinard: The next book on my TBR list is A Daughter of Fair Verona by Christina Dodd. I love the idea of following a mystery through the eyes of Romeo and Juliet’s daughter.
Amy Tintera (nominated for Best Novel – Listen for the Lie): I already mentioned No Body No Crime by Tess Sharpe, but I also have to recommend Best Offer Wins by debut author Marisa Kashino, which comes out this November. It’s a darkly satirical novel with a totally unhinged female narrator – it’s such a wild and fun read! Another debut author, Melissa Pace, has a psychological thriller called The Once and Future Me coming out this summer. It’s Dark Matter meets Girl Interrupted, and I loved it!
Mindy Mejia: There are some amazing new Minnesota writers on the scene. Horror author Katrina Monroe is working on her first PI novel and I cannot wait. Tony Wirt is delivering top notch domestic suspense. And he’s way past up-and-coming at this point, but Joshua Moehling should be on everyone’s TBR list.
Nicolás Ferraro (Nominated for Best Novel – My Favorite Scar) : I’m finishing “Saint of the Narrows Street” by William Boyle—Boyle never disappoints—and I’m about to dive into Gabino Iglesias’s latest novel. I think they, along with Megan Abbott, Atticka Locke, Jordan Harper, S.A. Cosby, David Joy, Frank Bill, and Richard Lange, have revitalized the crime genre. I’d also like to take this opportunity to mention authors who aren’t just taking their first steps, but who haven’t been translated or published in English and who possess a beautiful power. Marçal Aquino, Rubem Fonseca, and Patricia Melo from Brazil; Horacio Convertini, Kike Ferrari, Leo Oyola, and Eugenia Almeida from Argentina; and in Mexico, Imanol Caneyada, Carlos René Padilla, and Iris García Cuevas. Also, Ramón Díaz Eterovic and Rodolfo Perez Valero, or European authors like Diego Ameixeiras, Colin Barrett —too many to name, to be honest.
Joanna Schaffhausen: My TBR includes:
Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu
Careless People, by Sarah Wynn-Williams
All the Colors of the Dark, by Chris Whitaker
Everyone on this Train is a Suspect, by Benjamin Stevenson
Anywhere You Run, by Wanda Morris
An author to watch? I’ll go with Alex Kenna. Her Kate Myles series is twisty fun and full of sharply observed bits of humanity.
Katie Tietjen: I’m about to dive into the new Hunger Games book Sunrise on the Reaping and Deanna Raybourn’s Kills Well with Others, too, as soon as I pick it up from my library. Michael Connelly is coming out with a new book in May that I’m really excited about. I recently read Twice the Trouble by Ash Clifton (nominated for the best first novel Edgar) and really enjoyed it.
Kerri Hakoda: At the top of my lengthy TBR list are the outstanding novels by my fellow Edgar nominees! As far as up-and-coming writers – I heartily recommend these excellent novels by new authors Alex Kenna (What Meets The Eye, Burn This Night), Cayce Osborne (I Know What You Did) and Jennifer K. Morita (Ghosts of Waikiki). All are terrific reads featuring quirky female sleuths with fresh and unique voices.
Charlotte Vassell: My TBR is out of control. I think they’re breeding on my shelves. My next book is Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd—I’ve been reading a lot of books with nuns in them recently for some reason. I just finished a charming debut thriller called Lie To Me by Olivia Gavoyannis set in Greece amongst a glamourous rally-driving set in the swinging sixties. I am always open to more suggestions for additions to burgeoning collection…
Liz Moore: Look out for Eli Raphael’s Bright Work next year.
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If you could pick one classic crime author to recommend to new mystery readers, who would it be?
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Liz Moore: Ngaio Marsh
Kerri Hakoda: Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine
Nathan Ashman: This is a tricky one. I’d probably have to give a shout out to Ross Macdonald here. His Archer novels are always in and out of print and he tends to get overshadowed by the other big hardboiled writers of the era (Chandler, Hammett, Spillane). But they’re great books and Macdonald was also a pioneer of the environmental crime novel, which is a particular research interest of mine. Also a sneaky shout out for Dorothy Hughes.
Ayla Rose: Agatha Christie. Books can be great writing teachers, and reading Christie’s novels is not only a delightful experience, but a tool for learning craft.
Henry Wise: It would be hard to beat Dashiell Hammett, specifically his novel Red Harvest, but perhaps that’s such a classic that it’s cliché. If a reader already knew about Hammett, I’d recommend one of my favorite mystery writers, Daphne DuMaurier.
Sarah Easter Collins: It would have to be Daphne du Maurier and Rebecca, but William Wilkie Collins with The Woman in White would come a very, very close second.
Michelle Chouinard : Agatha Christie. Is there a sub-genre within crime-fiction she didn’t crush? She never did a cross-over with urban fantasy, but other than that she did everything I can think of from cozies to psych serial-killers to political thrillers. Her plots and twists were masterful, and while her characters are undeniably from a limited sphere of life deeply limited by the perspectives of her class and time, her ability to bring those characters and their motivations to life was skillful. And she did all that while keeping her writing simple and approachable.
Ashley Lawson: I would start by recommending an author like Shirley Jackson whose work was clearly influenced by crime fiction, though she adapted the genre’s tropes in surprising ways. She would be a great “gateway” into more traditional approaches. And then I’d sing the praises of Margaret Millar, whose work is due for a reprint renaissance. No two books of hers were alike, and she will continually surprise you (even if you’ve read her books before–the true mark of crime fiction genius, in my opinion).
Ian Moore: I’m going to cheat here and add a sub-genre, continental European detective fiction. When I was researching my Juge Lombard character – a kind of District Attorney that the French police/legal system is based around – I read a lot of Italian and French crime fiction.
The pace is slightly slower than US or UK fiction, almost at times too slow, but I found it a great way to learn about different countries in general, not just their crime stories. I really recommend Fred Vargas from France and Marco Vichi from Italy, both authors are wonderfully descriptive and create an almost other-wordly atmosphere that immediately grips.
Pat Gaudet: That depends on your definition of ‘classic crime author’. If you’re referring to those writers of the Golden Age, then I’d say Agatha Christie, hands down. Character, plot, twists in the storyline, psychological insights into the ordinary person gone wrong. Ms. Christie has it all. She’s stayed at the top for a good reason. But if you’re talking more modern-day, I’d say James Lee Burke. He’s got it all: unique characters, vivid settings, intricate plots, great insight into the human condition(evil and good), and an unapologetic love for the great state of Louisiana. His way with words never ceases to impress and astound me.
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: James M. Cain is one of the writers I return to frequently. Although, perhaps most famous for his books that were made into movies (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce to name just a few) there are so many things to recommend him. Cain wrote with a tremendous economy of style and fantastic narrative drive. His first person narrators are always fully realized in speech and character. He turned the genre on its head, and instead of having a crime and asking who did it, he puts you in the bad guy’s head and lets you see it all from that perspective. And that’s a very different feeling: it’s not a puzzle — it’s an experience. And, he didn’t write, as is conventionally done, about characters chasing a goal; he wrote about what happens to people when they get what they want. As he put it: “I write of the wish that comes true — for some reason, a terrifying thought.”
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What is your favorite crime book of the past 25 years?
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Kerri Hakoda: Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger.
Frank Figliuzzi: The Mueller Report, published December 6, 2018.
Amy Tintera: It has to be Gone Girl. I reread it recently and it was just as good at the first time. The voice, the characters, the wild plot, it’s all just perfect. I think we’re all just chasing the high of Gone Girl!
Nathan Ashman: Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. I give this to my MA students as the opening text on their critical crime fiction module, and it always provokes some fascinating debate about the aesthetic parameters of the genre. It’s an exceptional, brutal book with a coarse and dissociative prose style that brilliantly captures the alienation and violence of Melchor’s fictional milieu. Not one for the fainthearted, but a truly astonishing novel.
Tom Ryan: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters came out in 2002, so it just makes the cut. It’s a truly satisfying read, beautifully written and masterfully plotted, and the central twist absolutely blew me away. It really inspired me to try and coordinate and choreograph those kinds of surprises in my own work.
Sarah Easter Collins: Hard question! Because there are so many. I love literary crime writing in particular: The Goldfinch, The Lovely Bones—would The Wife count as crime? Arguably so. Gone Girl is right up there too, of course. But my absolute favourite has to be Fingersmith by Sarah Waters—halfway through the novel, it has the best, most astonishing, gasp-inducing twist ever. I envy anybody who has not read it. I literally shouted out loud. It was so brilliant, and done so well. The plotting is pure genius and that’s a key element for this type of story, where and when things are revealed.
Jacqueline Winspear: I’ll use the word “mystery” rather than “crime” as it offers more possibilities—a mystery does not need to have a crime at its heart. And my favorite mystery is always the most recent one I’ve raved about. I think The God of the Woods by Liz Moore is a terrific book—thriller, mystery, crime and stellar characterization rolled into a novel I literally could not put down (I have the bags under my eyes to prove it!).
Michelle Chouinard: Yikes, that’s crazy hard to answer! The best I can come up with is a two-way tie between The Da Vinci Code and Gone Girl. Not only is The Da Vinci Code a masterclass in building tension, it opened up so much conversation about the history of Christianity and religion in general, and about the moral implications of what people will do in service of their religious beliefs. Gone Girl blew my mind with respect to the structure of a twist, and the directions a thriller could take.
Joanna Schaffhausen: There have been so many great ones that this question is a bit unfair, but I am going to go with Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn for its genre-redefining swerve. I gasped with delight when the twist came and I was already enjoying the book heartily for its sendup of “the husband did it” tropes. I will say I did not enjoy the 1,000,001 imitators that followed nearly as much. The thrill of Gone Girl was in the shock of it, and you can only do that kind of shock once.
Nicolás Ferraro: Stepping outside the box, I’d choose Scalped, the 60-issue crime comic book written by Jason Aaron and primarily drawn by R.M. Guera. A noir story mixed with a Western, set on an Indian Reservation, it touches on not only family ties, but also returning home and feeling like nowhere is your place, drugs as an addiction and as a business, and violence as a means of communication. Characters for whom their own skin feels like a punishment, a place they can’t escape, even if they tear it off with their own hands. A poetry of helplessness.
Pat Gaudet: I don’t have one. Too many great stories out there. On any given weekend, the book I’m reading could be my favorite. Until the next one takes its place. Guess that’s just how love is.
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There are so many great crossovers these days. How do you feel about genre becoming more flexible, more porous, and more generous with its conventions?
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Erika Krause: I’m probably a crossover, so I’m all for it. I think genres were invented by booksellers so they know how to organize all their books. But crossover crime genres have existed for a long time. Fyodor Dostoevski, William Faulkner, Albert Camus, Ann Petry, Cormac McCarthy, and Toni Morrison were all crime writers, even if they’re not sold next to Agatha Christie.
Mindy Mejia: I love this genre’s ability to transcend almost every form of literature. You can have crime in space, crime on a submarine, and crime in a deeply affecting childhood memoir. The genre’s increasing flexibility is a wonderful evolution, but as authors we still have to be mindful of conventions and why we break or reshape them. Many readers rely on those conventions—it’s partly why they love the genre—and we want to invite those readers into that crossover territory with us.
Joanna Schaffhausen: I think readers mostly care about a good story, not about which precise tropes define that story. There can be a risk, I suppose, of including too many elements in the soup. You don’t want to try to appeal to everyone because you’ll end up with a mush that appeals to no one. However, mixing and matching story devices can be exciting and revelatory. If your heart tells you to write a noir story about space knights, then that’s what you should write.
David Lewis: Writing to a convention is a sure way to disappear up your own tailpipe. ALWAYS write your best story, be true to your characters, and be satisfied with the end result.
Kelley Armstrong: As someone who has always written cross-genre, I’m obviously in favor of it 😉 The book I’m nominated for here is cross-genre—Victorian mystery with a modern protagonist (via a bit of time-travel.) There is always a place for conventional mysteries. But there is also room for flexibility, and it’s a great way to get younger readers into mystery as they “cross over” themselves, perhaps from romance to romantic suspense to thrillers and widen their own reading horizons.
Charlotte Vassell: To my mind genre is a tool for marketing and sales purposes and not really the business of writers. That porosity is really just innovation and writers building on the great works that already exist as they have always done.
Frank Figliuzzi: I’m a proponent of the genre becoming more fluid, and I reject literary critics who don’t give high marks to a book that crosses over into some other areas like history, or cultural studies, or that uses true crime to take a stand on important societal issues. True crime and mystery have been pigeon-holed and constrained by traditionalists for far too long. With both my books, bookstores differed on where on the shelf to place them. I found this need to categorize as both funny and frustrating. I didn’t deliberately set out to write a mystery or true crime book in either of my works, but yet, Amazon and bookstores had to put it somewhere. This resulted in some critics writing things like, “This isn’t really true crime”. Again, funny, but frustrating.
Audrey Lee: When my agent was preparing to pitch The Mechanics of Memory to publishers, we struggled with this. It’s not a straightforward science fiction, thriller, or speculative novel but has elements of all three genres (and probably more beyond those.) It also leans a shade more toward the literary camp than some traditional crime reads.
I understand that publishers need to know what shelf a novel sits on, and I also understand that for readers, knowing what to expect from a chosen book is comforting. (I just don’t happen to write those kinds of books!)
I’ve realized that my binge watching choices are also often crossovers. Some of my favorite series mix speculative, fantasy or sci-fi, and a little dark humor. (Think Stranger Things, Severance, Westworld, and The Brothers Sun.) But whether it’s a book or a TV series, it’s all about the people. If you have a compelling set of characters, you’ll follow them across any genre.
So to answer the question: as a writer without a genre, I love it! And since my next two novels have the same cross-genre affliction, I hope that readers do as well.
Liz Moore: I love it. I’m glad people are writing what they want without feeling the need to stick to strict genre conventions–and I’m also happy for people who are sticking to strict genre conventions, if that’s what they want to do!
Nathan Ashman: To be honest, I think the genre has always been super flexible and porous, despite preconceptions that it is invariably rooted in familiar conventions and tropes. Part of crime fiction’s continuing success and popularity is due, in large part, to its ability to mutate and shift to suit different geographical, cultural and political landscapes. This ability to push against its own strictures is what has made the genre the global phenomenon it is now.
Tom Ryan: I love that so many mystery authors have been playing with conventions and taking their stories in new and unexpected directions. Cozy mysteries in particular have seen the release of some really innovative and creative titles in recent years. Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders, and the subsequent books in that series, are a wonderful, almost metafictional twist on cozies. Margaret Douihay’s Sister Holiday series is another standout, with its compelling, unconventional heroine: a chain-smoking, tattooed nun. Most recently, I read The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre, which is built around a brilliant premise – a hardboiled LA detective and an elderly English sleuth are forced to join forces to solve a series of enigmatically connected mysteries – that I wish I’d thought of myself! All of these books are fresh, playful, and satisfying, and I think this kind of envelope pushing really inspires experimentation among those of us working in crime fiction.
Henry Wise: I’m a fan of it. I don’t think I could ever write to firmly in any genre—I’d feel boxed-in if I tried, and it would undercut complexities that I find interesting. Most of the books that I love have been flexible, porous, and resisted the boundaries of convention. Many of the writers out there today are stepping over boundaries in exciting ways. A few that come to mind or Anthony Gedell, William Boyle, Eli Cranor, Tom Ryan, Brendan Flaherty, and Austin Kelly. The list could go on.
Isabella Maldonado: Genre crossing is an exciting evolution in story craft. Writers can liberate themselves from rigid boundaries and experiment with storytelling in fresh and dynamic ways. Because crime fiction reflects so many aspects of the human condition, it is ideal for incorporating elements of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and romance, among others, creating narratives with broad appeal while exploring themes from unique angles. This porousness invites creativity and challenges conventions, making the genre more inclusive and adaptable.
That being said, some booksellers and librarians aren’t sure where to shelve fiction with substantial elements from more than one genre. Also, writers risk alienating fans of both components of a blended story if they don’t ensure the core elements of each genre remain intact. For crime fiction, this means preserving the inherent tension, mystery, and moral complexity readers have come to expect.
Margaret Peterson Haddix (nominated for Best Juvenile – Mysteries of Trash and Treasure: The Stolen Key): I’m all for it! As someone who’s written a lot of books that make librarians ask me, “So… what genre would you say this belongs in?” I am sympathetic to the trouble it makes for genre-fied libraries. But I think allowing for more flexible boundaries between genres definitely enriches readers. It’s also more realistic. For example, the past is full of mysteries, and undoubtedly the future will be, too. So why should anyone insist that a book be categorized only as historical fiction but not a mystery; or only as science fiction, but not a crime novel? The same thing would be true of other types of crossovers. Fiction is better with well-rounded characters; I would say that it’s also better with well-rounded perspectives drawing from different genres.
Amy Tintera: I love it! Bring me all the thrillers with some romance, or the mysteries with a comedic edge. I’ve never been a genre purist, and I love it when authors mix it up a bit. Author Tess Sharpe has a book coming out this summer called No Body No Crime, which is such a fun mashup of romance and high-stakes action thriller. I’d love to see more of that!
Bonnie Kistler: Rigid adherence to rules and conventions restricts the imagination and can result in dull storytelling. So I’m generally in favor of more flexibility. But that being said, I don’t like encountering a supernatural twist in what is otherwise a realistic crime novel, i.e., the killer better not be a ghost!
Ian Moore: Why do genres exist? Isn’t it just a way of classifying the work so that librarians, booksellers and readers know which shelf they go on? I was always told by agents (in the UK where I was born and lived) that they weren’t interested in ‘humorous crime’ books because they didn’t know how to ‘place them’. Thankfully that’s all changed, and the more fluid genres become the better.
As writers, we are storytellers and if genre ‘rules’ have to be broken to tell that story better that’s surely a good thing. We should all stray from our own lane occasionally.
Ashley Lawson (nominated for Best Critical/Biographical – On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett): Genre literature has always been permeable! Crime fiction shares a family tree with gothic literature, sensation fiction, suspense fiction, the western, and science fiction, etc., and writers like Leigh Brackett have excelled in multiple genres because many of the same skills are broadly applicable. The more recent evolution that I’ve noticed, though, is that so-called “literary” fiction has increasingly embraced the tropes–and even the label–of crime fiction. The more writers embrace the genre, of course, the less a stigma against writing in the genres persists, but even more importantly, the outside perspectives of writers who work in multiple genres allows for fresh takes on standard genre elements. A great example of this, in my mind, is Rebecca Makkai’s 2023 book I Have Some Questions For You. It slots quite well into my crime fiction class, but it also interrogates many of the assumptions that readers bring to those same texts.
Robert Jackson Bennett (nominated for Best Novel – The Tainted Cup): I think it’s great, and also somewhat inevitable. What makes crime fiction – and especially murder fiction – so durable and resilient is that it has such a strong, stable skeleton: a crime, the effects it has on the community, and the beats one must follow to investigate it. You can hang nearly anything on those bones, and if you do it deftly enough, it’ll work tremendously.
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What do you want to see more of in the genre? What has already reached the saturation point?
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Ashley Lawson: Are we tired of the nice-guy-who-conveniently-shows-up-to-help-with-the-heroine’s-investigation-but-SURPRISE-turns-out-to-be-secretly-evil trope yet? I am. Give me more of the secretly-sinister old ladies character type instead, please!
Bonnie Kistler: Unreliable narrators are great and I hope to see many more of them. But not when they’re unreliable only because they’re drunk or medicated or otherwise unstable. That’s been overdone.
Michelle Chouinard: I’d love to see a resurgence of private investigators, especially women that are private investigators.
Ian Moore: I think at the cozy end of things, there is a trend to concentrate more on characters than on plot and it ruins things for me. Your characters may be interesting, even unique, but if I can guess whodunnit by page twenty-five it’s just no good.
Nathan Ashman: I think we are reaching a saturation point with domestic noir; there seems a broader move towards cosies and puzzle mysteries at the moment. Personally, I’d like to see more noir. And by noir I mean those suffocating, warped romances that first emerged in the interwar and postwar period in the United States. I think this kind of book has fallen out of fashion a bit, but there is something about the cynicism, paranoia and fatalism of these novels that gets me every time!
Nicolás Ferraro: I would love to see more Latin American authors published. Not only have great authors been published in horror and fantasy—Mariana Enríquez and María Fernando Ampuero, to name a few—but they have become undisputed references. But it seems to me that in crime fiction, there’s a lack of great Latin authors in the American market. It is necessary, in my opinion, to translate, publish, and disseminate writers who offer another way of telling the different stories of despair that pass through us every day. These are stories that are further removed from investigative crime fiction and enigma, and I understand that they may be more violent or uncomfortable for the palate of the traditional crime novel reader, but I think that’s why they’re necessary. This discomfort offers us another way of contemplating ourselves, of perceiving ourselves, of understanding ourselves. In the same way that hybridization with other genres like fantasy and horror has given new life to crime fiction, Latin American authors could bring a breath of fresh air and offer a different kind of noir.
Amy Tintera: I’d love to see more darkly humorous crime fiction with a strong focus on voice and character. I love mysteries and thrillers where you can sink into a character’s world through their voice. And I especially love a little dark humor sprinkled into a story!
I think we’ve probably reached the saturation point with female narrators who drink very heavily (to the point of blackout – which can by handy in a crime novel!). But with that being said, I think there’s always room for more of every trope, even ones we’ve seen often. I think you’d just need to bring a lot of care and nuance into that story now, since we’ve read it so many times.
Pat Gaudet: I want to see more deeply developed, character-driven stories with strong plots that keep me engaged as I work to figure out the who, how, and why. Not sure about the saturation point. Trends are cyclical anyway. Like politics and fashion, they go in and out of style. We should write what we want to read and trust there are a million others out there who want it too.
