Handwriting is on the Wall
I have just heard the news that cursive writing will no longer be taught in Ohio schools, making it the third state to abandon the skill (behind Indiana and Hawaii). The keyboard is king now, the thinking goes, making unnecessary a discipline that teaches manual dexterity at the fine motor level. In these modern times [...]
Oh, Fudge!
Where to come down on the idea of cussin’ in one’s books? I’ve gotten away from it for the most part, mostly because I’m a Christian and try hard not to use it myself. But I’ve also sat through enough TV versions of films where the language is softened, and for the most part the [...]
5 Ways to Create Red Herrings in a Mystery Novel (via Global Mysteries)
If you’re an aspiring mystery writer, or an aspiring writer in general, you should make Nancy Curteman’s Global Mysteries blog a regular stop on your social media rounds. She has great topics, posts more regularly than I do, and doesn’t dither like me. Here’s her latest, another ball knocked out of the park. Red herrings [...]
Exclamation Point Points
After thirty years of my wife insisting, I am now reading Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel. And it’s a wondrous thing. For a first novel, Auel created a rich world based on sound (at the time) scientific speculation, bent the rules within acceptable parameters, expertly manipulated plot twists and turns for maximum [...]
Little Moments
SPOILER ALERT! Do not read this entry if you have not read A Death of Honor. Payne caught up as a uniformed man with a megaphone announced that boarding was closing to check for last-minute cancellations. Trinina looked harried. The steward guarding the path looked stern. He handed her Nathan’s suitcase. “What’s the problem?” “He [...]
A Chat About Place
I’m going to try something here. A few days ago, a friend of mine who has decided to try and write a novel popped up in my chat window to ask a couple of questions. Instead of writing at length about the subject, I’m going to just put the transcript here and see what happens. [...]
How-To Books and You: A Concise Guide to Whether or Not You Should Read a Book on How to Write
Okay, it’s pushing past 4am. The Benadryl I took to settle my allergy has long since kicked in, but the email I decided to write to pass a few minutes turned into a monster, and so I’m going to recycle it here. A friend writes: I wanted to see if you thought that a prospective [...]
Horror, Suspense, and Sloppiness
I haven’t succumbed to memery in quite a while, but there’s one going around Facebook right now that gives me some excellent blog fodder, so here we go. This latest invites us to, in honor of impending Halloween, to name our 10 favorite horror movies. When I was first tagged I thought, I can’t do [...]
Curteman on “Show, Don’t Tell”
Frequent readers of this blog will know that I often invoke “show, don’t tell” as one of the early steps to take in becoming a good writer. Now mystery writer Nancy Curteman has taken all of the, um, mystery out of doing this, explaining it in a much more concise way than I could. Hat [...]
Over- and Underwhelmed
Well, I’ve got all 900+ posts on the blog all categorized… now I’ve discovered that I can’t pick up a new blog template from the old account without starting a completely new blog – at least not yet. There’s word in the Blogger literature that a conversion period is coming up, so maybe that will [...]
