BookLife

“Suspense is what keeps the reader needing to turn the page to find out what’s going to happen next,” says novelist Dave Zeltserman in Both Gut & Brain. “It doesn’t matter whether the story involves a couple whose relationship may be falling apart or a hero in deadly peril, if we’ve made it impossible for the reader to put down the book then as writers we’ve done our job in creating a strong sense of suspense.”

If we’ve made it impossible for the reader to put down the book…  That’s a pretty big “if”.  Below, on the day of release of Top Suspense: 13 Classic Stories, the first e-book anthology of the Top Suspense Group, six contributors to the anthology return to talk about how to create and sustain suspense—how to make it impossible for the reader to put down our book.
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“Suspense,” says novelist and screenwriter Stephen Gallagher, “is the engine of any good tale, in any genre.”  Susupense is the question asked, the answer delayed, and all the anticipation in between.  To find out more about suspense—what it is and how to create it—I got in touch with the masters: the members of Top Suspense Group..

The Top Suspense Group is an organization of writers from across the genres whom have joined up to make it easier for readers to find high quality e-books.  These are award-winning writers like Max Allan Collins, Bill Crider, Ed Gorman, Vicki Hendricks, and Lee Goldberg.

Through the Group’s site you can find a selection of e-books, reprints and originals, in a variety of formats.  The group’s first anthology Top Suspense: 13 Classic Stories is due out tomorrow (April 1^st) and it includes stories from most of the group’s members.
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For more than 30 years, Candy Moulton has worked as a writer, editor, researcher, and photographer.  Most of that time she has been freelancing.  In the spirit of the Old West, she turned a hardship (loss of her job) into a new life (as a freelancer).

“There is no salary in freelancing,” Moulton said, matter of factly. “There is income that you generate by finding good opportunities and producing solid material and hitting deadlines.”
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Novelist Livia Reasoner has never held a traditional “day job”, yet, as she says below, the work never ends.  She’s lived all her life in a small Texas town, raised children with husband James Reasoner, and now tends to her aging parents there.  In the late 1970s, the Reasoners built their own house together.  In 2008, they lost that house and their writing studio to a wildfire.  Together, they slapped off the ashes and rebuilt…  and, of course, kept on writing.

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