Resources and Links

Good Word

still crazy after all these years
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Good Word

still crazy after all these years
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This very interesting link provided by Gillhoughly on payout averages per pub house:

http://www.brendahiatt.com/id2.html


Note: these are the romance genre, and are based on one person's research. Anyone have any info on thriller?
 
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Clair Dickson

A dark core to every cloud
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Lee Lofland's Graveyard Shift is an excellent resource for things police related. And not just for those writing police procedurals, but anyone who's characters cross paths with police and crimes even courts. Great stuff. (His book is good too. =)
 

HistorySleuth

Researching History's Mysteries
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Free writing, good for outlining, program

At the moment when my book is almost done, now I feel it needs an outline as I have a lot of time element things going on, then the sub plots, so I want to make sure I tie them all up. I was looking for a program to organize an outline better then file cards, notebooks or more doc files, which is OK, but that still seems too confusing for me. I started doing it in just a database, then I remembered this neat program. (Of course it's probably mentioned on the boards somewhere already and I just couldn't find it.)

I found it a few months ago and I am just now going to try it. yWriter5
By a guy who is a programmer and a writer. It's a free program. There is a 9 minute video so you can see all it does. It will even print out a synopsis from what you've input. I know there are programs like this out there but they seem like overkill to me, like I don't want it to write it for me. I just want it to organize outline notes and not pay some crazy price to do it. Not to mention the allure that this one doesn't cost anything.:e2cloud9:
 
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Sassy3421

Plotting murder..most of the time
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Need help with your guns?

Thought I'd share this link with you guys. It's way over my head at the moment since I'm completely naive about guns. However, since once of the bodies in my new mystery has a bullet to the brain, I better learn some things and quick.

But I came across this forum - similar format to AW - and thought some of you might find it useful.

http://thefiringline.com/forums
 

Exile87

New kid, be gentle!
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Woot woot! Can't wait to check it out later! Thanks for sharing.
 

quicklime

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ar15.com and huntersandpatriots.com are also hunting/gun sites
 

Sassy3421

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looks like my gun thread/link was moved here - makes sense. (I didn't see this thread before) at least they're all together now :)
 

heyjude

Making my own sunshine
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Ew! Thanks for the heads-up, nathanrudy. I'll ask Good Word to edit next time she's around. :)
 

ElouiseBates

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Looks like some great resources here. I just started working on a collection of spy-related short stories - some humorous, some serious - and have been wondering about finding resources so that I don't make any tremendously egregious mistakes.

One story I'm plotting and researching involves the OSS during WWII. Can't wait to learn more about that - and if anyone has any books on that topic to recommend, I'd be grateful!
 

onesecondglance

pretending to be awake
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Found this report by the UK Home Office on the drugs trade:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110220105210/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/rdsolr2007.pdf

About 100 pages long (although the back half is all appendices), and written in this curiously dispassionate business analysis jargon, it's actually a really useful guide to understanding how drug operations are structured, how and why people tend to get involved, and how effective various law enforcement strategies are.

More than that, it's full of great anecdotes from the dealers interviewed - such as the man forced to do a hit as part of his initiation, except the target turned out to be a guy working for his boss wearing a bulletproof vest, and the gun loaded with rubber bullets; or the supplier who claims his wife was a police informant, and mentioned that he'd found out she'd been previously married to two other dealers who had also subsequently been arrested...
 
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dsoul700

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I've written a political/ crime thriller that takes place in a fictitious city in Nigeria, and its kind of tough getting an agent to look at it.
 

onesecondglance

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I'm not going to post a direct link here out of respect to how recent and sensitive the case is, but UK writers may wish to check out the transcript of the Mark Duggan inquest hearing dated 15/10/2013.

The transcript includes some very good information into how CO19 - the Metropolitan Police special response division - officers operate. This includes details of their training, their equipment, and tactics.

It naturally also includes a description of the fatal shooting in question, which is why I am not linking here, but if you are interested I'm sure a quick Google search will bring it up.
 

Flipper_Dipper

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As a Forensic Psychology student we tend to be given decent crime related sources/web links. For those setting their book in the UK, the ACPO guidelines are really useful I find, there's things like interviewing and dealing with witnesses/suspects and the metropolitan police have manuals online for stuff like child protection and major incidents (Although I think they are only accessible when they are renewed so may be a little outdated) . I'll see if I can dig up the web links at some point and share them, in the mean time I'm sure a quick Google search would bring them up. My boyfriend is studying computer forensics as well so I'm sure he'll have some resources on that as well!