Today at The Open Notebook, we introduce a new recurring feature, Single Best. We asked top science writers to give us their best advice in one minute or less. We begin with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Deborah Blum. Blum is the author of five books, most recently the best-seller, The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Blum’
Making the leap from news to books: Critical questions
Posted by Charles Choi on May 30th, 2012
Authors of science books often begin as writers of science news. As a science journalist who is looking to write a book, I’ve become very curious as to how other science journalists made the leap forward. I suspected that the questions that go into books might be different from those that drive newspaper and magazine [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft 
Tags: Blum, Books, Choi, Dobbs, Elements-of-Craft, Guest Contributor, Hutson, Koerth-Baker, McKenna, Narrative, Reporting, Zimmer 
5 Comments »Deborah Blum traces a poisonous history
Posted by Jyoti Madhusoodanan on November 30th, 2011
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Blum’s five books have immersed her in the worlds of animal rights, the psychology of affection, the neurology of sex, the search for paranormal phenomena, and the chemistry of poisons. Her best-selling book The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, published in 2010, traces [...]
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews Tags: Blum, Books, Drafts, Edits, Guest Contributor, Madhusoodanan, Narrative, Notes, Poisoner's Handbook, Structure, Writer Interview 1 Comment »Ask TON: From idea to story
Posted by Jeanne Erdmann and Siri Carpenter on October 27th, 2011
Welcome to day four of our first-birthday palooza. Today, we greet you with another episode of Ask TON. (If you need to catch up on earlier episodes, see here, here, and here.) Here’s the question for today: What questions do you ask yourself about a story that you’re considering pursuing? How do you decide whether it’s a good idea? [...]
