Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Focus

›
By Rick Blechta These days, it’s difficult to keep one’s focus. (“Gee, now there’s something no one else has ever said before,” stated Capta...
Monday, November 29, 2021

Plot Twists and Being Lucky

›
By Thomas Kies One of the topics I teach in my creative writing class at the college is how to write effective plot twists. In many cases it...
2 comments:
Saturday, November 27, 2021

Fuel Handler of the Air Cav

›
Recently, Donald Hall posted this photo on Facebook and asked about the painting's origin, sensing a story similar to what I had shared ...
4 comments:
Friday, November 26, 2021

A Yawn-Worthy Hero

›
 I, too, have experienced what Barbara wrote about on Wednesday -- those moments of wondering "Why am I doing this?" with all that...
2 comments:
Thursday, November 25, 2021

Happy Thanksgiving.

›
 I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. Eat what you want to eat, be with those you want to be with, and stay safe and healthy. For the pa...
2 comments:
Wednesday, November 24, 2021

The cherry on top

›
 Last week I hit a milestone in my current work in progress. After about ten pads of foolscap scribbling, I wrote ...  This has been an extr...
3 comments:
Tuesday, November 23, 2021

How long should you give a book you’re reading?

›
by Rick Blechta Today’s post is going to be a short one. I’m sure we’ve all begun books where after a certain number of pages a thought cros...
3 comments:
Monday, November 22, 2021

Places in the memory

›
Book Week Scotland has only just ended. This is an annual clambake of all things bookish thrown by the Scottish Book Trust and supported by ...
2 comments:
Friday, November 19, 2021

The Sacred Process

›
 I almost misspelled the title of this blog, making it "The Scared Process" rather than "The Sacred Process." Actually, ...
Thursday, November 18, 2021

Processing Process

›
I really enjoyed Tom’s post this week. The writing process interests me a great deal, and processing the process always leads me to more que...
1 comment:
Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Seven Years Later

›
 Tomorrow, November 18th, marks seven years since the first book in my Aurora Anderson cozy mystery series, Fatal Brushstroke , was released...
2 comments:
Monday, November 15, 2021

My Process

›
 By Thomas Kies I’m going to riff off of Donis Casey’s excellent blog this week about her writing process.   Mine is best described as chaot...
3 comments:
Thursday, November 11, 2021

The Process

›
 I, Donis, am working on a new Alafair Tucker mystery right now, and am very interested to see how it's going to turn out. I never know ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Your hologram awaits

›
"I'm getting too old for this s**t," I muttered to the dogs recently. I'd been trying to wrestle Instagram to the ground s...
4 comments:
Tuesday, November 09, 2021

My brushes with stardom (or famous people I’ve bumped into by accident)

›
by Rick Blechta I loved the post by Douglas yesterday, and having not a jot of an idea about what to write about today, I’m going to riff o...
8 comments:
Monday, November 08, 2021

My brush with stardom

›
I've long been a fan of actor Brian Cox, now even more recognisable than before thanks to playing Logan Roy on the TV show 'Successi...
Wednesday, November 03, 2021

What Qualifies as a Historical Mystery?

›
  I’ve been working on a historical mystery lately, one set in the 1850s. So far I’ve just been doing some outlining and research. Haven’t w...
5 comments:
Tuesday, November 02, 2021

A random observation about reviews

›
by Rick Blechta My post last week dealt with getting reviews for one’s book. It’s common knowledge that reviews make or break books, and ge...
9 comments:
Monday, November 01, 2021

Tidbits From the News

›
by Thomas Kies  I worked for newspapers and magazines for over thirty years so I’m a news junkie, pure and simple.  A few stories jumped out...
Friday, October 29, 2021

Not Heaven, But a First Draft

›
 In one of his dramatic monologues Robert Browning's chararacter -- an aging artist with a faithless wife -- muses, "Ah, but a man&...