‘Tis the season for blustery days & drizzly nights, chimney smoke & warm cider, & best of all, for everything spooky & mysterious. Back when the kids were in public school, I got hooked on those true haunting shows. You know the ones—clips of real people telling about their spooky encounters intercut with recreations of…
I’m a sucker for a locked-room mystery. Or an isolated-island mystery, in this case. It’s day 114 of quarantine here, and while nobody has been killed off yet, I’ll admit I’m starting to have a lot more sympathy for all those characters trapped in country houses, abandoned islands, and snowbound trains. I’ve been looking forward…
Quarantine got you feeling like you’re trapped in the movie Groundhog Day? Then today’s book is just what you need. Or maybe not… I don’t know about you, but since our quarantine went into effect (15 weeks ago, but who’s counting?), my days have started to run together. Our Mother’s Day cards were late because…
A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but when it comes to your characters, names matter. A lot. Would Harry Potter be the same character if he’d been named Archibald Beauregard III? I think not. So where can you look to find just the right names? Well, there’s always the old standby—the…
When we think of hair-raising quotes, horror movies are often the first thing that come to mind. There’s no denying the spine-tingling effect that lines like “Now I want to play with yoooouuuu” still have after all these years. But horror movies don’t have a monopoly on creepy. Literature has quite a few chill-inducing quotes…
November is right around the corner, and with it comes National Novel Writing Month. Stock up on coffee, tea, & chocolate, and let’s get writing! What is National Novel Writing Month? NaNoWriMo, as it is affectionately known by the thousands of writers who look forward to it each year, is a month-long writing free-for-all. The…