Wednesday, October 24, 2007

James Scott Bell updates

James Scott Bell is a busy man these days. His latest offering Try Dying has just been released. It's the first book in a series, which marks Jim's first foray into writing a suspense series character.

In a recent interview Jim conducted at Novel Journey he explained more about Try Dying:

"This is not strictly in the inspirational genre. This is a book I wrote for the general market, and here's why. I got mad. I think there's a trend in secular thrillers that is too dark and gratuitous. I wanted to go the other way. I wanted to write in the tradition of 1940s and 1950s film noir and crime fiction. These managed to be suspenseful without gagging you. Why can't we still do that? We can."

The next Buchanan novel comes out in July, and is titled Try Darkness."

In other news, Jim has also penned another writing how-to book for Writer's Digest Books called Revision and Self-Editing. Its description is thus:

"This unique guide provides writers with an exclusive four-draft plan that takes them from an organic draft though the rough draft to a final draft, and ultimately a polished draft. This comprehensive plan makes the task of revision manageable and helps writers to significantly increase their odds of publication. In addition, the book features specific revision tips geared toward the first read-through, as well as targeted instruction that focuses on the individual elements of a novel like plot, structure, characters, voice, style, setting, and endings."

Read our interview with Jim here.
Read our review of No Legal Grounds here.
Read our review of Presumed Guilty here.

4 comments:

Deborah said...

looking forward to this book..but just wondering. didn't he write a series called the Kit Shannon Trials as well as a coauthors series with Tracie Peterson featuring the same character?

TitleTrakk.com said...

Deborah,

Yes, he did. The Shannon Saga had three novels (these were the one's co-written with Tracie Peterson). The titles are: City of Angels, Angels Flight & Angel of Mercy. After that Jim wrote The Trials of Kit Shannon solo. The titles of that series are: A Greater Glory, A Higher Justice, and A Certain Truth.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Deborah said...

that's what i thought that he had wrote another series character. i guess i just wanted to see b/c the original post said that the try dying series was his first series character and wanted to clarify. thanks!

TitleTrakk.com said...

Ah! You're right! We got that wrong. Have changed the post to be "first suspense series character". :)