Randee Dawn's Blog

As a writer, it’s enormously exciting when random folks reach out to tell you how much they love your work, and what it meant to them to read your stories, or your novels.

In recent months, thanks to the proliferation of AI slop like that cordyceps fungi in The Last of Us, authors like me have been inundated with emails that may start out as flattery — they loved the book, they run a book club, they want you to join a “storytelling community” they run, they’d like permission to post a review of ...

Delayed in posting this one this year — just not enough time or spoons or whatever a person is supposed to have in their utensil drawer to get everything done! But at last, I can now present the list of books I read in 2025, so get ready to take notes.

As ever, I like to note that I’m not so into “this is what I thought” reviews. Reviews, to my mind, should tell you a little about the story, maybe what other authors the writing or story reminds you of, and a general sentence about if it worked o...

Twenty-six years ago, Law & Order: SVU came to life on NBC. It’s still running, about to kick off its 27th season on September 25. It’s now the longest-running live-action primetime series in U.S. TV history.

None of which Susan Green and I could have anticipated when we heard that Dick Wolf was going to give us access to write The Law & Order SVU: Unofficial Companion in 2008. As I like to say now, our book, which came out in 2009 and was compiled in 2008, was meant to be the definitive, whole ...

My summer is full of conventions. Book conventions, sci-fi/fantasy conventions, you name it, I’m there if I get a chance to sell my latest books — of which there are three out in 2025 alone. But while this year may be the most conventions I’ve ever attended (see: three books out this year), it’s far from my first rodeo. I’ve been attending conventions for nearly two decades now, and seen how they grow and — often — wither.

There’s a lot of withering going on in East Coast-based cons, which is wh...

Writing funny fiction isn’t easy; writing it with style, wit and great storytelling is even harder. Yet here is Caitlin Rozakis, who in 2024 not only published the New York Times bestseller Dreadful — about an evil wizard who accidentally gives himself amnesia and then rethinks the whole “evil” part of the job description — but also had another one of her novellas (“Leah’s Perfect Christmas,” written under the name Catherine Beck) turned into a Hallmark Channel Original Movie.

But Rozakis isn’t ...

It’s the end of the year, which means it’s time for everyone’s “best of” list, or “favorites of” lists — and it’s hard not to check them out for recommendations to put on your own reading lists for the next year! But I have a mixed reaction to reviews. Long ago I decided I didn’t really want to know whether any one person thought a book was “good” or “bad.” Yes, there are objective elements you can point to — poor editing, no ending, bad pacing — but mostly what I want from a review is:

Note: My friend and I were given free dinners at Bottino in exchange for (me) writing a post about the experience, but my opinions are my own and not influenced by anyone else.

My husband likes to say that growing up for him, Italian food was just “food.” (Neither of us are of Italian extraction.) That said, he also grew up on Long Island — a bit of a distance from most known Little (or actual) Italian neighborhoods. Me, I grew up in Maryland where once in a while we ate “elbows and chop meat,” ...

When I was younger, I went to so many concerts. I was music-obsessed. It was in my dreams, it fueled my storytelling, the lyrics gave me ideas to chew on and beliefs to consider. I felt untethered if I was going someplace and didn’t have my music with me on whatever the portable music device of the time was. And to think there was a time before people really even had portable music devices, beyond a transistor radio.

I go to fewer concerts now. Once you’ve done something hundreds of times the lu...

Tune in Tomorrow, my debut novel about a reality TV show run by mythical creatures, for mythical creatures — but starring humans — has been out for the world to enjoy since August 2022. And back in May of 2022, I was able to reveal the book’s incredible, eye-popping original cover (thanks to a special cover reveal article in The Mary Sue). The evolution of that cover can be found here.

But now Tune has a new life, a face-lift and an additional bonus chapter added into it! And I can share that ne...

I’m not sure where or when I originally met Russ Colchamiro — but I do know that I heard about his amazing interview show the Russ’s Rockin’ Rollercoaster long before we ended up connecting in person. Russ is one of those energetic forces of nature you occasionally come across in this business, a guy who seems to have a whole lot going on at any given time — from books to appearances to conventions to just interesting other side projects. As of right now, he’s hosted over 130 Rollercoaster episo...