LAURENCE MACNAUGHTON

  • Announcing a new book giveaway! It’s like all of those miniature candy bars left over from Halloween – but with zero calories! My debut novel, Conspiracy of Angels, is now in its second printing. That makes right now the perfect opportunity…

  • It didn’t take FBI agent Cleo Barrett long to find Prez’s office. She just followed the thin strains of old funk music back through the warehouse. Prez turned out to be a thin, middle-aged black guy in a sharp suit.…

  • When I was about nine years old, I ordered a cassette tape of Halloween sound effects out of the back of a catalog, But here’s how big of a sound-effects nerd I am: It wasn’t even October. Seriously. Today, enhanced ebooks from Booktrack.com combine two…

  • We tend to think of life in moments, as if you snap a photo, and that’s your life. Fixed, unchanging. But it doesn’t work that way. Life is more like a filmstrip. It’s constantly in motion. Wherever you are in…

  • My next book is so new that even the title isn’t settled yet. But my agent sent me a nice note about how well I pulled off the simmering romantic tension between the lead characters. Considering that the point-of-view character…

  • Did you know that there’s a black market for stolen tarantulas? Or that these spiders hibernate during the winter? Can you imagine someone crazy enough to break into the dark, cobweb-choked crawlspace under a house and steal a bunch of giant spiders?…

  • If you want to write a book, why do it first thing in the morning? Studies show that not only are we more creative in the morning, we’re also more optimistic. In other words, we’re happier. Sure, misery and angst…

  • This is the week that New Year’s resolutions die. I didn’t just make that up, by the way. I read it in The Wall Street Journal. Also, there was something in there about bonds or treasuries or whatever. So much…

  • Let’s be clear: Jack Campbell is possibly my favorite author of all time. That’s no hype. When he publishes a new book, I put the world on hold until I’ve devoured every last page. The Lost Fleet series (and its spin-offs,…

  • Help me spread the word about Conspiracy of Angels. Share the official trailer, and you could win a paperback book autographed by yours truly. Come on, it’s fun. And it couldn’t get any easier to win.

From the blog

  • Want to Get Published? Read This.

    I’ve talked to dozens of best-selling authors about their early years, before they were published. And the similarities between them are striking. On average, they wrote about half a dozen unpublished manuscripts before they sold a novel. (By the way, this is what I call the Myth of the First Novel. Because it’s hardly ever…

  • Compelling Character Arcs in 4 Easy Steps

    I’ll let you in on a secret: readers want your character to change. They know, deep down, that your character is unhappy with the status quo at the beginning of your book. Something is terribly wrong in your character’s life, and things can’t keep going on this way. Something’s got to give. Readers fervently hope…