The Chopping Blog

It’s a super common entry point into a fantasy novel: the protagonist steps through a portal or is somehow transported into another world.

What I’ve come to realize—both through my work as an editor and as a writer—is that a well-written manuscript isn’t always enough.

"Those rough rejection days were when I let my stubborn side shine."

"Writing is a matter of doing it—again and again and again. It’s not always brilliant and innate talent."

In And Then There Were None, Christie subverts several tropes in the mystery genre. She disguises the central plot so completely that we don’t realize who the protagonist is until the final pages.

This isn’t a hero with flaws.

Darling Axe senior editor David Brown just published his debut novel 🤩

Harry Dresden is a magical PI in Chicago with all the familiar fixtures of a Chandler mystery: a down-on-his-luck detective, a corrupt city, a femme fatale, and a secret too dangerous to name.

Darling Axe editor Heather Tekavec just published a new book 🤩

"The world that we live in is deeply fucked... and I don't want to read about that right now."

Chandler drew heavily from Arthurian legend. One of his early fictional detectives was even named “Mallory,” a direct nod to Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. He later renamed the character Marlowe.

In noir, the detective is hired to do a job—usually to find someone or uncover some buried truth—but the story unfolds more like a quest than a casefile.