The Suspense Thriller

Get the Knowledge Without the College! You are a writer. You dream of sharing your words with the world, and you're willing to put in the hard work to achieve success. You may have even considered earning your MFA, but for whatever reason--tuition costs, the time commitment, or other responsibilities--you've never been able to do it. Or maybe you've been looking for a self-guided approach so you don't have to go back to school. This book is for you. DIY MFA is the do-it-yourself alternative to a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. By combining the three main components of a traditional MFA--writing, reading, and community--it teaches you how to craft compelling stories, engage your readers, and publish your work. Inside you'll learn how to: • Set customized goals for writing and learning. • Generate ideas on demand. • Outline your book from beginning to end. • Breathe life into your characters. • Master point of view, voice, dialogue, and more. • Read with a "writer's eye" to emulate the techniques of others. • Network like a pro, get the most out of writing workshops, and submit your work successfully. Writing belongs to everyone--not only those who earn a degree. With DIY MFA, you can take charge of your writing, produce high-quality work, get published, and build a writing career.

This book is a comprehensive study of one of the most popular genres in the cinema. From a perspective sympathetic to popular culture, this study analyzes a large number of primarily American and European films by a variety of distinguished directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Claude Chabrol, John Frankenheimer, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Costa-Gavras. Indispensable to anyone interested in understanding how suspense thrillers work and what they mean, this book provides insightful analysis of hundreds of memorable films, while at the same time working as a virtual how-to manual for anyone trying to write a Hitchcock-like thriller. The first section of the book is primarily theoretical. It offers a bibliographical survey and then explains why we so profoundly enjoy these suspenseful films of murder and intrigue. A chapter on "Thrills: or, How Objects and Empty Spaces Compete to Threaten Us" explores the psychological concept of the thrill and relates it to the psyche of the spectator. To what extent does the suspense thriller represent a symbolic and vicarious experience of danger? A chapter on "Suspense That Makes the Spectator Take a Breath" explores the crucial narrative concept of suspense and relates it to the psychological mechanisms of anxiety incited in the spectator. Why do we like to be scared? A final theoretical chapter offers a dynamic definition of the suspense thriller derived in part from Edgar Allan Poe and based primarily on content analysis. The second section of the book is more of an historical survey and devotes one chapter to each of the suspense thriller's primary sub-genres. These chapters provide close readings of more than 150 major films and detailed analysis of the suspense thriller's conventions, themes, and recurrent iconography. Sub-genres include The Postman Always Rings Twice, Body Heat, The Manchurian Candidate, The China Syndrome, Missing, The Passenger, Spellbound, Obsession, Marathon Man and Blue Velvet. A final chapter explores areas for further research and offers concluding insights.

The murder of a world-famous physicist raises fears that the Illuminati are operating again after centuries of silence, and religion professor Robert Langdon is called in to assist with the case.

Cybele Moondragon is an unemployed English graduate student who is disillusioned with her life and tired of being in debt. She decides to resurrect a matriarchal cult based on the pagan goddess Cybele in order to make a lot of money and empower men and women who are stifled in more traditional, patriarchal religions. Cybele is joined in her quest by her best friend Janus Styx, a Psychology graduate student who helps with the funding for the cult but, unknown to Cybele, manipulates vulnerable members of the cult for his own purposes. Gabriel Anderson is an undercover investigative reporter who realizes he can get the inside scoop on the birth of a pagan cult in Winnipeg and its possible links to eco-terrorism. Cybele slowly discovers that while she leads ceremonies in hopes of showing her followers the path to spiritual enlightenment, Janus is playing a dangerous game of manipulation with his. Will Cybele succeed in resurrecting her life and ushering a new matriarchal religion into the world or will she fall prey to Janus's machinations and become the scapegoat in his quest for power and control? You'll have to read the book to find out.

From the Amazon bestselling author of The Prediction and The Shattered Conscience ‘The characters were rich, the plot was believable and the twist was downright wicked!' CINDY ROBERTSON A girl missing for twenty-five years. Presumed dead. Until now... Twenty-five years ago, Chelsea Thomson disappeared after a party in the American seaside town of Hyannis. Her body was never found, yet the evidence that amounted against high-school dropout Hector Sims led to his life imprisonment. When Chelsea’s former sweetheart Jimmy Quinn arrives in Hyannis for a conference—his first trip to the U.S. since her murder—it unleashes a rollercoaster of raw emotions. Discovering an old journal belonging to her, Jimmy makes a shocking discovery that suggests she could still be alive. Detective Bryan Myers has never been able to dispel the shred of doubt surrounding the murder case. While he welcomes the new evidence that Jimmy has uncovered, it unwittingly puts Myers on a tumultuous trail to a psychopath who is willing to kill to keep the truth concealed... ____________________________________________ PRAISE FOR SHRED OF DOUBT: ‘The twists and turns surprised me so that I gasped.’ LORI BINDER ‘This is a character driven story with a well-developed plot and delicious twists and turns.’ KELLY KNAPP ‘Fast reading, believable. There was nothing I didn’t like about this book. I finished it in two days.’ KENNETH WILLIAMSON ‘One of the best books I have ever read.’ MIGDALIA BURGOS ‘Shred of Doubt will have you constantly trying to solve a twenty-five year old crime. The unraveling of secrets will cause pure disbelief.’ PHYLLIS KRALL ‘Read it in one sitting! The characters were rich, the plot was believable and the twist was downright wicked!' CINDY ROBERTSON

WHAT IS THE STORY GRID? The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult). The Story Grid is a tool with many applications: 1. It will tell a writer if a Story ?works? or ?doesn't work. 2. It pinpoints story problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer, revealing exactly where a Story (not the person creating the Story'the Story) has failed. 3. It will tell the writer the specific work necessary to fix that Story's problems. 4. It is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attic drawer. 5. It is a tool that can inspire an original creation.

A 14-year-old girl is butchered in a high school shooting. A 72-year-old woman is throttled at home. A 7-year-old child is crushed into the concrete by a trash dumper. The only thing common between all of them: their name. Someone is slaughtering every woman, girl, and child named Natasha Mehra . . . Which is what Natasha Mehra, the most unpopular girl on campus, discovers. Though she' s always hated her name, she would' ve never imagined that it would be the reason she would be on the run from a gruesome death. But these murders aren' t random acts of madness. Rather, they are part of a conspiracy hatched by the Kul, an all-powerful secret organisation with tentacles everywhere. And the success or failure of this 2000-year-old mission will determine the future of humankind . . .

In her most masterful novel of medical suspense, New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen creates a villain of unforgettable evil--and the one woman who can catch him before he kills again.