I've opened three more seats in my workshop and reduced the price to $225 Canadian to fill the seats. Come polish up your opening chapter with a Penguin Random House thriller/mystery author.
Big thanks to Sam Weibe and @John_Orpheus for the shout to my debut novel, A Gift Before Dying, on CBC's The Next Chapter yesterday as a great summer mystery read for 2026! @cbcbooks https://t.co/ZvHaMdoXdz
I'm excited to be heading to Toronto next week as a panelist for the Motive Crime and Mystery Festival as part of the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) (@festofauthors)
@seanilling Short answer is it still can be worth the effort in declining genres/categories if the idea is right. I’m a literary agent, so I’m certainly biased, but I am happy to discuss offline.
The Globe and Mail's glowing review of A Gift Before Dying (Crown, 2026) from last week—"a debut that is absolutely brilliant." As an author from Newfoundland setting a novel in Canada, I'm humbled and very grateful! 🇨🇦
.@GrantGinder has maybe done the best @nytimesbooks "By the Book" interview I've ever read.
Sampling: "For me, 85 percent of being a writer is learning the hard way that the great idea I had after two glasses of wine is not, in fact, a great idea."
https://t.co/yQR2mzr1I9
So cool! The audiobook for my debut novel, A Gift Before Dying, has been chosen as Spotify's Editors' Pick of the the month for February. Listen to it here: https://t.co/R1TpgXh8ut
Lee Child has sold 200 million books, which makes him one of the best-selling authors in history.
Here's his advice for people who want to sell lots and lots of books:
"In order to sell a lot of books, you've got to push the boundary outward to the outer rings of Saturn... to the audience of people that read one or two books a year. And you've also got to satisfy the habitual, skillful, and literate readers in the center at the same time. But the people on the outskirts are not habitual readers.
Structurally, what you've got to do is have a style that is both palatable and somewhat enjoyable to the habitual readers in the center, but also useful to the people on the outside.
I spend a lot of time concentrating on rhythm, the rhythm of a sentence, because a book is however many thousands of sentences in a row, and you've got to make it so that each sentence has a rhythm, and that rhythm must always be tripping forward, forward, forward.
It's about propulsion. It's about creating a style the experienced reader can appreciate. But for the people on the outside, the non-habitual readers, I have my hand gently on their back, pushing them through.
They don't notice. They're not aware of it. But I'm easing them through the process of finishing the book."
The ‘Malcolm Cole’ hiccup aside, this review is so amazing!! Congratulations, @MalcolmKempt! With the snow storm of the decade coming this weekend, I recommend hunkering down with A GIFT BEFORE DYING.
This Thursday, I’ll be giving away two free copies of the A Gift Before Dying audiobook to two randomly chosen subscribers to my newsletter. Sign up at https://t.co/MkrXOaukmU
.@reeveswiedeman charts the rise of David Ellison, the Paramount Skydance CEO, who now has his eyes set on a bigger prize: Warner Bros. Discovery. https://t.co/wXF6tjYwle
Booklist has also given A Gift Before Dying a starred review and named it the must-read mystery of 2026. I still can't believe how much praise the book is getting. I'm so grateful to the team at Crown (Penguin Random House) and my agents at Inkwell Management for making it happen. Pre-orders are available everywhere books are sold: https://t.co/r3LCqHOCc5
A disgraced investigator.
A frozen town.
A crime no one wants to talk about.
Malcolm Kempt's A GIFT BEFORE DYING is out on 1/20. Learn more at the link.
https://t.co/RgCjFA9sCR