FREE RANGE WRITERS

By Dave Butler 5 a.m. arrives extremely early. In the summer, when the sun rises at the same time, it’s tolerable. But in the winter...

I’m preparing to go on an international trip soon, so I’ve been thinking about all the things I’ve experienced on my travels. As Rick...

By Dave Butler Imagine that you’re a landscaper photographer, visiting the west slopes of the Rocky Mountains for the first time. If...

In my last effort for the Free Rangers posted in the final month of the previous decade (12/15/19) I introduced my scene checker, a legal...

Cozy mysteries are generally set in a small town with a cast of quirky characters and little violence. Murders are often depicted as a...

By Dave Butler Throw them a challenge! That simple piece of advice remains one of the best I’ve received from other mystery writers in...

Rare as Earth gets a checkup. I'm working on a final edit of my novel in process, Rare as Earth. A list, entitled "Scene Checker,"sits...

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of books written by inexperienced writers, and this has made me think back to my early days as a novelist....

The Role of Theme and Plot in Environmental Mysteries By Dave Butler Building on Pam and Greg’s reflections on theme and plot, I find the...

As she is wont to do, Free Range Writer partner Pamela got me thinking about plots and themes in my novels. Let's look at my first, That...

Every novel has a plot, which is the story line (what happens). But most good novels also have a theme, which is the underlying message...

Following on the heels of Pam and Greg’s intriguing posts, I am often asked by readers and other writers about where I write. For me,...

I'm following my friend Pam's post with a few tips of my own about writing a novel. I'll conclude with a war story about the dreaded...

For some peculiar reason, people are often interested in how an author writes a book. All authors have to find the process that works...

By Dave Butler Unlike Pam and Greg, I don’t have any specific experiences with private investigators. I haven’t worked as a PI, nor have...

In my first novel, The Straw That Broke, I introduced Jake Goddard as a PI who had sort of fallen into the job through his work as an...

I worked as a private investigator for more than ten years, and that experience definitely impacts how I write my mysteries.

When you spend time in wild areas as the three of us do, you’re bound to run into trouble once in a while. We thought we’d pick our most...

What do you do when you're kayaking down a river canyon and your kayak breaks in half?