How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights by Ariel Gore. Crown Publishing Group, 288 pp., $13.95

If you've thought about writing fiction, are new to the genre or have been plodding along for years but need to jolt your creative senses, Ariel Gore's How to Become Famous Before You're Dead could give you the fuel to reach that next level. It's an informational, irreverent and, at times, hilarious look at what this writing life is like.

Gore, editor of Hip Mama and author of The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show, How to Leave a Place and Atlas of the Human Heart, among others, mixes her experience with interviews with other writers, along with Q&As from students, whom she calls "Rising Lit Stars" to form a book that you can either read in one sitting or digest in bites -- the short chapters make it easy to put down and pick up again without feeling like you've lost your place.

The interviews provide a range of points of view, and keep How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead from becoming How Ariel Gore Got Her Start -- a refreshing change in books that mix writing instruction and memoir. While some of the advice she gives might not rest easily with established writers (write for free?), most is sound, and the exercises alone are worth the price of the book. She doesn't shy away from the idea that everyone comes at writing from different angles and achieves success different ways, either, which hammers home that her tips are suggestions and ways to help you along the path you make instead of making that path for you.

Forensics and Fiction: Clever, Intriguing, and Downright Odd Questions from Crime Writers by D. P. Lyle, MD. Thomas Dunne Books, 284 pp., $23.95

Can mercury be found in a murder victim's hair a year after death? What's the most "merciful" way to kill someone with a knife? What toxin can be administered over time and cause death with symptoms that would mimic a stroke? And, really, can a corpse be bled after death?

No, I'm not posing questions on behalf of the writers of Law & Order or Cold Case. But these are questions asked to Dr. D.P. Lyle by mystery, suspense and thriller writers, some of whom have been from those two TV shows.

Lyle, also a mystery writer, goes beyond those everyday hum-drum "how to murder" questions keeping you up at night (writing fiction, of course), and goes back in time to medicine's past and answers such questions as, how was diphtheria treated in 1886 in the American Midwest; how was syphilis diagnosed and treated in the 1960s; and how was breast cancer treated in 1826? These are real questions with real answers, some of which could be yours.

If you're a mystery or crime writer, it's a must-have (and gave me ideas for a few stories myself). But if you're not interested in the mechanics of murder she wrote, Forensics and Fiction is still an interesting read because it covers so many topics in short chunks of words. Just don't get any ideas for real life, okay?

Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success by Penelope Trunk. Warner Business Books, 201 pp., $22.99

Obviously, the working world is not what it once was. Pensions are almost unheard of, health insurance is not assumed and today's 20-somethings rarely stay with the same company for more than five years, let alone three or even one.

Trunk, a Yahoo! Finance columnist and ASJA member, navigates this new business world through her point of view in Brazen Careerist. And while I don't agree with the majority of her advice (and if you're a parent, you might not like her reasons why college kids should move back home after graduation), her commentary might make you look at your career, whether freelance or staff, in a new way and consider how some of her success tactics, like being a sponge to soak up every kind of experience you can (crucial for a lot of freelance writers), especially if you're between jobs, and how to use e-mail to your advantage but how to also cement relationships through personal contact, can shake things up around the office.

At the very least, it's a peek into the minds of a younger generation, and a quick light read, if not your new bible on how to get ahead in business (because you are really trying).

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse by Ben Yagoda. Broadway, 241 pp., $21.95

Word lovers will enjoy this one, and even if you couldn't stand your college linguistics class (count me in that category), Yagoda makes the mechanics of this thing we do interesting -- fascinating even. It might have you checking over your work (I know I did).

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It is about the gears of the English language, and Yagoda's commentary offers technical writing instruction about how to punch up your fiction and non-fiction. The title quote comes from Mark Twain, and Yagoda writes with the same pithy style. He's sarcastic at times, especially when quoting from what must be an expansive library of samples of how we write, and why it makes sense -- or doesn't.

The book is organized per part of speech, though I wouldn't recommend skipping to whatever you consider your personal favorite because the book works best when read as a whole. What's interesting, though, is that he left verbs for last. Even if, as Yagoda says, he organized the parts of speech alphabetically, it carries the most weight, as anyone from your first-grade English teacher to your current editor will tell you.

You can only hope that a sample of your writing doesn't become part of the sequel -- or isn't in the current volume.

Jen A. Miller is author of The Jersey Shore: Atlantic City to Cape May, a Complete Guide, which will be published in May 2008. She also blogs about books at bookaweekwithjen.blogspot.com