Maine Crime Master Award

By Carla Neggers | May 18, 2023

This year’s Maine Crime Wave writers conference is in Portland on June 9-10, hosted by the Maine Writers & Publishes Alliance (MWPA), and I’m thrilled and excited to receive their 2023 Maine Crime Master Award. What an honor! I love Maine, I love writing books set in Maine, and I’m a huge fan of so many wonderful Maine authors.

On Friday evening, I’ll be doing a question-and-answer with outstanding author Julia Spencer Fleming, an honor in itself. Join us if you can. The chat is free — you can get all the details and RSVP here. 

Saturday is the actual conference with panel discussions and all s… Read More

Read More >

Just a few weeks until race day!

By Carla Neggers | May 7, 2018

My next half-marathon is June 3rd and I am not ready! I get this feeling with writing sometimes, too. Weeks out from a deadline, I look at my work-in-progress and don’t see how I will be ready to turn it in. For most of us, running a half-marathon and writing a novel don’t happen in a matter of a week or two. We need time.

This is when I remind myself of the line from the Tao: “Let life ripen and fall, force is not the way at all.” Just show up every day and keep making progress. It’ll all work out.

But…there’s always my other motto: “Anxiety focuses the m… Read More

Read More >

When a writing life gets out of whack

By Carla Neggers | February 27, 2018

Here’s an essay I wrote for Writes of Passage, an award-winning collection of essays put together by Sisters in Crime and published by Henery Press.

“Enjoying”

A writing life can get out of whack for any number of reasons. I love to write and always have, from the moment I first climbed a tree with a pad and pen as a kid and spun stories on my favorite branch. That doesn’t mean I’m immune to the ups and downs of a writing life. The character who refuses to come together, the elusive plot twist, the 100 pages that end up in the trash, the tight deadline, the family crisis—they can all w… Read More

Read More >