(Written for Writers’ Narrative Magazine, April 2026) By Biba Pearce You’ve just come back from an incredible trip. You know the kind, the one where you wandered the streets soaking up the sights, the sounds, the smells, the whole atmosphere of the place. Maybe it was a Greek island, where you explored narrow cobbled alleyways,…
Writing About Places You’ve Never Been (Published in Writers’ Narrative Magazine – February 2026) As strange as it sounds, some of my most successful series are set in places I’ve never physically visited. Miami. Colorado. Scandinavia. On paper, that sounds crazy. How can you convincingly write about a place you’ve never seen? Or smelled? Or…
Considerations for writing a long-running series (First published in Writers’ Narrative Magazine – March 2026) If you want to learn how to write a memoir, a literary novel, or a once-off, then this article isn’t for you. If you want to learn how to plot and build a series in a commercial fiction genre, then…
The Research Behind ‘Gilt Edge’ They say being a writer makes you an accidental expert at a thousand different things. But with my latest Kenzie Gilmore thriller, Gilt Edge, I think I may have finally pushed that definition to its limit. Writing a contemporary crime novel in 2026 means navigating a world that moves at…
Crime Fiction with a Dark, Swampy Twist First published in Strand Magazine, March 2025 Noir has always been about shadows—the ones cast by streetlights on a rain-slicked pavement, the ones lurking in alleyways, and most importantly, the ones inside the human soul. It’s a genre built on corruption, moral ambiguity, and the idea that justice…
Writing a Killer’s Evolution in a Long-Running Crime Series First published in Crime Time Magazine – April 2025 Crime fiction thrives on mystery, suspense, and the chase between detective and killer. But what happens when the past refuses to stay buried? In my latest novel—Book 8 of the DI Rob Miller series—I found myself returning…