Thursday, March 20, 2025

Clues

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I'm beginning to see a light a the end of the tunnel with my WIP. I've finally determined on a route to take to the end that pleases...
Wednesday, March 19, 2025

National Craft Month

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 by Sybil Johnson March is National Craft Month. I don’t know who decides these things. Probably a committee somewhere. March is my birth mo...
Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Boggled Conference

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 by Charlotte Hinger The recent Left Coast Crime Conference wasn't boggled. I messed up my planning. The conference was great. There wer...
2 comments:
Monday, March 17, 2025

How I do I sell this thing?

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    Stephen King can spend a few days writing a short story and sell it for $10,000 as the lead-off story in an anthology. His name and repu...
Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Gearing Up for Left Coast Crime 2025

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Catherine Dilts At some point, even a determinedly introverted turtle has to poke her head out of her shell. This is the year for me. I’m ...
Monday, March 10, 2025

Emily's Book

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  By Thomas Kies This past Sunday, I was both proud and delighted to attend the book launch for Emily Dunlop Carter.  The book, entitled A S...
1 comment:
Friday, March 07, 2025

Frame It Up: Experiments in Short Story Structure

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  By Shelley Burbank Cliff overhanging Gun Beach, Tumon Bay, Guam I drafted a short story last summer when I was in Maine. I wanted to write...
Wednesday, March 05, 2025

Comfort Reading, Writing and Viewing

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 by Sybil Johnson I recently had a discussion with someone about what kinds of shows and movies brought comfort. Hallmark movies were at th...
Tuesday, March 04, 2025

The Smerchek Museum

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By Charlotte Hinger A  while back Michael Chandos broke my heart with his account of determining what to do with his grandfather's war m...
2 comments:
Thursday, February 27, 2025

The Serendipity Genie

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 Donis here, happy to announce that we just bought a new car. It's the first new car we've bought in 20 years. We decided we'd b...
Wednesday, February 26, 2025

In praise of launches

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 In the past two weeks, I released SHIPWRECKED SOULS, my latest Inspector Green mystery, with two launches, one in Toronto and one in Ottawa...
Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Balance

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Catherine Dilts When I retired from the corporate office job recently, I envisioned sitting at my computer for eight hours a day, churning...
Saturday, February 22, 2025

Real-life Breaking Bad

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We love our crime stories but at a distance. Criminals are fascinating as long as they get no closer than Netflix, a podcast, or the pages o...
2 comments:
Friday, February 21, 2025

Creativity & Manifesting Your Dreams

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     Today, I’m going to share some excerpts from a recent essay I sent with my newsletter, PINK DANDELIONS. Not because I don’t want to w...
Thursday, February 20, 2025

Friendships & Book Recommendations

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One of the many things I have long enjoyed about the crime-writing community is the friendships I have made. My first publishing contract wa...
1 comment:
Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Agoura Hills Library Event - Spring Into Mystery

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 by Sybil Johnson Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of participating in an author event with Ellen Byron and Marjorie McCown at the Agoura H...
Monday, February 17, 2025

A Tough Task

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 by Steve Pease/Michael Chandos    My father died last year just after his 103rd birthday. I inherited all his "stuff". He was a c...
Thursday, February 13, 2025

A Little Something on the Side

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 I learn a lot from the funnies page in the newspaper. I'm a puzzle aficionado, and start every day by reading the paper front to back, ...
Tuesday, February 11, 2025

So? When your critique partner cracks the whip on overused words.

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Catherine Dilts I’ve been in critique groups large and small over the years. Currently, one writer and I exchange manuscripts once a month...
Monday, February 10, 2025

No Conflict, No Story

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 By Thomas Kies Syd Field, author of Screenplay: The Foundations of Screen Writing , said, “All drama is conflict. Without conflict, you hav...