Magpie Moments: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
Many interviewed authors say there’s no shortage of story ideas, those little “what if” nuggets that can be rooted in character or place or plot. Some keep files with newspaper articles or bits of research that they consult from time to time, while for others the act of gathering the shiny bits (aha, here comes a Magpie Moment) is enough for them to burble in the subconscious until something else emerges. In that vein, yesterday I came across an article about a book of unsolved crimes that mentions an Australian fisherman discovering a body tied to a steel crucifix. This morning Read more…
Excavating for Trees, and for Story Structure
My husband and I had a bunch of holes dug a few months ago while we were getting some other things done on our property. “Dug” isn’t really the right verb, though. Not quite blasted—pile-driven? Our whole neighborhood rests on relatively recent lava flow with a thin veneer of cinder, the perfect habitat for native ohia trees and lots of non-native, invasive green crap. In other words, we don’t do a lot of “digging” around here. We’d already transplanted two trees we’ve had for several years—a bonsai (not intentionally, just stunted) avocado and an unidentified citrus (it’s never fruited and Read more…
Sydney Brennan’s Summer Vacation… Not!
It’s Friday, and that means it’s Blog Post Day! Bet you didn’t know that, did you? Well, that’s just one of the status-type things I’m going to share on my two-days-early Summer Schedule Post. (Please–no songs from musicals; I am so not a musicals person.) Until recently, I’d been writing a couple of blog posts a week, but with no set schedule, just posting one every four or five days. That meant within a couple of days of posting, I was thinking, Is it time yet? When did I post? What am I going to write about this time? Not that Read more…
Magpie Moments: Who Doesn’t Have a Soft Spot for Pretty Boats?
Today’s post is another installment of Magpie Moments, snippets I snatched from real life and incorporated into my Sydney Brennan Mysteries. I’m continuing with one from my most recent novel, The Perils of Panacea. I was reasonably sure the first boat I’d passed after jumping down was JD’s. I have a soft spot for pretty boats with lots of exotic hardwoods and long bowsprits. In other words, ones that are a pain in the ass to maintain. His was not a pretty boat, but it did look like it would still be afloat tomorrow, which was more than I could say Read more…
Spicy or Bland: The Challenge of Applying Humor with a Judicious Hand
When my husband (always my first reader) reads something I’ve written, whether it’s a blog post or a novel, part of me doesn’t want to be in the same room. There’s a certain sense of self-consciousness, not just that what you’ve written might not be that good (after all, if it’s a draft you can always revise), but also that the reader will see something of you in there that you didn’t intend to share, something you didn’t even see yourself. But there’s another part of me that wants to sit right next to him, looking over his shoulder. If he Read more…
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