ALIENS (1986) Where the first Alien movie was pure SF horror, the second was a straight-up military SF action flick. It was probably the most seminal influence on my teenage brain when it came to storytelling and how to do human drama and action beats. You had a...
Five Movies that have Influenced My Writing Die Hard (1988) – This was the first movie I watched while reading the script. The exercise was assigned as homework for one of the many on-line classes I took in my quest for better writing skills. Immediately establishing...
5 Books That Changed My Life By Reece Hirsch Here are five books that had a huge impact on me and my writing: Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone. I first read Robert Stone’s novel about a heroin deal gone very wrong for the first time when I was a teenager but I reread it...
FIVE THINGS DUMB CRIMINALS DO ONLINE (A THRILLER WRITER’S GUIDE) While conducting research for my novel, The Advocate’s Daughter (St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur, March 22, 2016), I came across several reports about criminals who were caught because of their Google...
THE MERGER: THE CONGLOMERATION OF ORGANIZED CRIME by Jeffrey Robinson. The sequel to his bestseller THE LAUNDRYMEN, this survey opened my eyes to the fluid, intertwining currents between legitimate commerce and its illegal mirror image on a universal scale. THE DELTA...
1984 by George Orwell I read this early in high school – one of those assignments I waited until the last possible moment to complete, which resulted in my reading the entire book in one sitting. At this point in my life, I’d been reading a lot of horror and thrillers...
