Friday, June 30, 2023

A Cautionary Tale

›
 "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . ." You probably remember this opening line from A Tale of Two Cities. Tha...
3 comments:
Thursday, June 29, 2023

The Weather Report

›
Watermelon pie  Donis here. I live in southern Arizona, so the weather report for the end of June is always the same. It's hot. The fore...
3 comments:
Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Bye Bye Safety Deposit Boxes?

›
 by Sybil Johnson I read a newspaper article not long ago about how Chase bank is phasing out safety deposit boxes (or safe deposit boxes, ...
4 comments:
Monday, June 26, 2023

Love a Good MacGuffin!!!

›
by Thomas Kies    In his last blog, Mario Acevedo mentioned a story device called a MacGuffin. What exactly is a MacGuffin? The term origina...
1 comment:
Saturday, June 24, 2023

My Crystal Ball Needs Adjustment

›
 I have good news to share as Denver Noir  won a Colorado Book Award. The anthology had a great roster of writers who each contributed an am...
2 comments:
Wednesday, June 21, 2023

In celebration of writers' retreats, writing or not

›
 This will be a short post because I am spending four days at a "writers' retreat" with two of my close writer friends, Vicki ...
1 comment:
Tuesday, June 20, 2023

What Happened?

›
 by Charlotte Hinger      I'm finally back after a long absence. So here's what happened: On a long-planned and much anticipated tri...
4 comments:
Thursday, June 15, 2023

Starting Something Completely Different...

›
 ...and wondering what the hell did I do that for? Donis here. I've started writing a book that is entirely different from anything I...
2 comments:
Wednesday, June 14, 2023

CCWC 2023 Recap

›
by Sybil Johnson I spent last weekend at the California Crime Writers Conference in Culver City, California. It’s a 2-day conference held ...
Monday, June 12, 2023

Gatekeepers

›
 On Saturday I attended a book event that I, along with nine other authors, were invited to.  I generally don’t like to spend time at an all...
3 comments:
Thursday, June 08, 2023

Nuggets

›
Inspiration. Muse. Ideas. Call it what you will. But story nuggets, regardless of where you get yours, keep us going. I started out as a rep...
3 comments:
Wednesday, June 07, 2023

Vicki Delany takes over Facebook

›
 Yesterday was a special day. My great friend, travel buddy, and writer extraordinaire threw a Facebook party to celebrate the release of he...
2 comments:
Friday, June 02, 2023

I'm Back

›
 Better late than next time. I've missed my last two Friday posts. With the last, I was returning from South Burlington, Vermont. Luck w...
Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Learning How To Write

›
  by Sybil Johnson  I’ve been making roman shades lately, replacing ones that are way too old and falling apart. I could have had a blinds ...
Monday, May 29, 2023

Relatable Characters? Not This Time

›
  I did a workshop at our local community college last week about drawing upon real life to write fiction.  It’s a great subject because isn...
Saturday, May 27, 2023

Emotional Filters

›
 While we humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved, coolly rational beings, we are in fact, emotional creatures. Every decision w...
Wednesday, May 24, 2023

On being an Other

›
 Goodness, what a lot of wonderful stuff happened since I accidentally missed my last post! So much to comment on. I love all the talk about...
Thursday, May 18, 2023

How Writing a Novel is Like Finding a Woolly Mammoth in Your Back Yard, or The Writer as Archeologist.

›
I adore Sybil's entry, below, on the joys and fascinations of the research an author does. A few years ago I read about a soybean farmer...
Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Curious Me

›
 by Sybil Johnson Writers are a curious bunch We see something we find interesting or we don’t understand, we look it up. I’m constantly fin...
Monday, May 15, 2023

Putting Novelists on a Leash?

›
 There’s an excellent op-ed piece in Saturday’s Washington Post entitled “Limiting What Novelists Write About Won’t Help Readers”. The colu...
2 comments: