Author: Lin Robinson

Linton Robinson was born in occupied Japan, schooled in Asia, and is now a 20 year resident of Latin America. Robinson is an award-winning journalist and noted photographer, with credits in top markets. His syndicated columns were cult favorites in the nineties. Learn more at his blog and his Amazon author page.

Taking it to the Streets

Photo by Lin Robinson

Five days a week I walk through empty, walled streets from my house in Tijuana to a coffee shop where I can drink bottomless coffee and write with no goddam Internet. Except on Fridays. On Fridays the walk is through a teeming shopping district, a market village that sprawls over eight square blocks. Call it a sobruelas, tianguis, flea market, jumble sale, or whatever, it is for a half a day one of the hottest places to buy and sell in the third largest city in Mexico. Continue reading “Taking it to the Streets”

EX-PERTISE

This article makes me feel a little weird because it runs counter to a longstanding peeve I’ve had with internet writing information. Namely the widespread impression that anybody with a keyboard is equally qualified to tell other people about how to write and publish, whether or not their degree of knowledge on that subject is greater than or equal to the average ass of the average rat.

I know of two blogs in which 13 year old writers give advice on how to write novels. Dozens with invaluable insights on writing from high school kids. How many more with scintillating tips from people who just wrote their first book, or are going to finish it any day now, except blogging writing advice takes up so much of their time? Many of the newbie forums like Writers Digest are packed with total wannabes who have no sense of irony when it comes to contradicting published authors, even best-selling authors. The equality of information seems to reduce experience to the quotidian.

You can imagine how fond I am of this sort of thing. Continue reading “EX-PERTISE”

Tips From the Masters: Bill Fitzhugh

Bill Fitzhugh is another of my favorites who should be far better known and appreciated. And I’m far from the only one who feels that way. Maybe not quite a “cult” author, Fitzhugh decidedly commands a “niche” of rabid fans. Carl Hiaasen and Tim Courtney are among them: in fact if you ask any star of funny crime novels who they read, he’ll on their short list. If you doubt me, take a look at his website.

His humor is different from those two–and from anybody else–with a unique, rustly dryness about it. His criminals are folks like you and I who get caught up in something too awful to come to grips with and too quirky to cope with. He’s also a long-time DJ and major record collector, so music figures heavily in his books, including titles like “Highway 61 Resurfaced.” One of my favorite lines is when evil exterminators are cruising Manhattan one asks their guide if he’s sure they’re on the right street and he answers, “Positively, Fourth Street.” If you laughed, or even know why that’s funny, you should enlist in the Fitzhugh cult right away. Besides, he graduated from my own alma mater, U. of Washington. Go Huskies! Continue reading “Tips From the Masters: Bill Fitzhugh”

Tips From the Masters: Paul Levine

Paul Levine is one of my recently acquired tastes. He’s another one of those lawyers who started writing best-sellers just to piss us all off. Hey, do us writers start trying cases? But he won me over with a single title: Habeas Porpoise. You gotta love that.

And many love his two main series, Lassiter and Solomon & Lord. Lassiter is the slap-happy attorney who wouldn’t know what to do with an ambulance if he caught it, but can stipulate the wisecracks and rough stuff, Solomon and Lord are sort of odd-couple “Moonlighting” match-up of two counselors most unlikely to form a partnership. But a lot of fun. I really like the sloppy, always-in-danger-of-being-disbarred-and-unfriended heroes in both series, and envy the way he can juggle three or four storylines, each one always hanging its butt over a cliff as we segue to one of the other scenarios. Continue reading “Tips From the Masters: Paul Levine”