Uploaded August 2013 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
"Hollywood can be an evil, mean place. And it makes people cruel, mean, and, in my case, when I'm writing, turn into murderers and do evil things," says Melodie Johnson Howe, former actress turned award-nominated mystery author. Howe describes why Diana Poole, the heroine of her latest mystery, City of Mirrors, is the most similar to Howe of all her characters. Enjoy the author speaking about City of Mirrors in this video interview.
"Hollywood can be an evil, mean place. And it makes people cruel, mean, and, in my case, when I'm writing, turn into murderers and do evil things," says Melodie Johnson Howe, former actress turned award-nominated mystery author. Howe describes why Diana Poole, the heroine of her latest mystery, City of Mirrors, is the most similar to Howe of all her characters. Enjoy the author speaking about City of Mirrors in this video interview.
![Authors on Writing Short Stories
Make every word count. Bring characters to life, quickly. Boil it down to the essentials. Believe in your story. These are some of the challenges that acclaimed short story writers—such as James Jones, Susan Minot, Peter Cameron, David Corbett, Nicola Barker, Bradford Morrow, and Robert McCammon—have faced in their craft. My father [James Jones] said that writing a novel is like having a terrible illness with a sort of low-grade fever that lasts and lasts and lasts . . . and that writing a short story is more like having a terrible flu but only for five days, says Kaylie Jones. Discover more about the short story form, its unique demands, and its potency in this video, presented by Open Road Integrated Media. Authors on Writing Short Stories](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/r5DjuuNGXbQ/mqdefault.jpg)









