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I don't have any problem with Dan Brown's writing. The thing that frustrates me about his books is his research. He sounds plausible enough in places where I don't know anything about the subject, but his books are peppered with scientific and historical howlers that tend to throw me out of the...

There are agents and editors who blog, and a couple (e.g. Queryshark) who concentrate on helping writers learn to write good queries. Well worth your time. A place to start: Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent

I read a lot of mysteries. My favorite authors are Arthur Conan Doyle, Rex Stout, and Dorothy Sayers. Sayers' The Nine Tailors is probably the individual mystery I like best. I can't say what grabbed me most about it without spoiling the end, but I'll note that I found it unusually atmospheric.

I'm particularly fond of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe detective stories.

I'm really fond of Tolkien and Narnia. My less obvious favorites: The Secret Country Trilogy by Pamela Dean. She has a fourth book, not part of the series but set in the same world, called The Dubious Hills. The Liavek multi-author series. Sort of like Thieves' World, but less grim. I...

Fred Saberhagen's Dracula series is set in modern times, good, and funny. His Dracula has a wry sense of humor. There's an old book called Vampyr, by Jan Jennings, from the 1980s that has a modern vampire society. It might have influenced White Wolf's Vampire game, though they never mentioned...

Believable? Well, it's no wackier than some of the things I read in New Scientist. I managed to suspend disbelief in it, say. I read it and enjoyed it reasonably well. I usually like Crichton's science fiction, though I'm less fond of the stories that are purely social critiques.

The ones I know about that are most readable were written or finished in the gap between the publication of books 4 and 5, so they don't follow canon after that. They're After the End at the Sugar Quill and some pieces by Cassandra Clare, whose titles I've forgotten, and which were in a Yahoo...

I wrote an article explaining the Northern verse form, which may be helpful for potential readers of The Legend who are unfamiliar with it.

There's a fair amount of heavy nonfiction I read that way: I need the information in the book, but the writing doesn't grab me. I'll often be reading several works like that at the same time. Poetry usually wants to be read in smaller slices than prose, so I'll often be reading a book of...

I keep my blog updated regularly with short posts; I guess I'm reasonably prolific there. I usually write more formal nonfiction slowly. My prose fiction writing is glacial. My major work in progress is a fantasy epic poem, and to call my pace 'glacial' would be to flatter it: 'geologic' might...

If you're looking for an agent, there are a number of agents who have blogs, like Janet Reid and Nathan Bransford. You might well find it helpful to read their blogs to find out what they're looking for in queries.

Working writers approach writing in a large number of different ways. Some plan carefully; some plan a little; some wing it completely. Some start with characters, some with a plot, some with a theme. Some build the story from the top down, starting with a broad view and filling in the...

I can't say I have much use for lists like this. They have a large tendency to start out with genuinely overused elements and then rapidly to add basic plot-form after basic plot-form to the List of the Forbidden, until they've gutted the genre and painted the writer into a tiny corner. And...

The single best mystery I ever read is The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers. My favorite mysteries overall are Sherlock Holmes.

"She Walks in Beauty," Cain, and Manfred, by Byron. The Awntyrs off Arthure, author unknown. "Ulysses," by Tennyson. "The Wild Honeysuckle," by Philip Frenau. "The Glories of Our Blood and State," James Shirley. "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Thomas Gray. The Ballad of the White Horse...

I like Macbeth, The Tempest, and Julius Caesar. But my favorites are the histories, excluding Henry VIII. I tend to regard them as one long work; and I'm not sure why I like them best, except perhaps that they don't have a conventional dramatic shape. Perhaps they feel more real to me because of...

I second the recommendation for Abhorsen. I also really like Pamela Dean's Secret Country Trilogy. There are three books in it: The Secret Country, The Hidden Land, and The Whim of the Dragon. She wrote another book set in the same world called The Dubious Hills. Valerie Griswold-Ford has out...

I like Lovecraft, or some of Lovecraft. The tales that called 'Dunsanian' from their resemblance to Dunsany's fantasy writing appeal to me most; I also like parts of the Cthulhu mythos. The very grimmest of his horror I'm less fond of.

I didn't much like the ending of Mostly Harmless, the last book in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I wasn't entirely surprised, because I've found bleakness lurking under absurd humor before. But I would have preferred something else.