James Scott Bell

The Art of War for Writers borrows Sun Tzu's structure and applies it to a novelist's working life: short numbered sections on tactics, on discipline, and on the campaign of getting published. Bell practised law before writing and has produced a long shelf of craft books alongside his own thrillers. The advice is concrete and unromantic, aimed at people who intend to finish something and sell it rather than at people who want to be told that writing is a noble calling.