You all remember Basil Exposition in Austin Powers—the stuffy intelligence chief played by Michael York whose sole purpose was to provide background information for the plot, i.e., exposition. I thought about ol’ Basil today as I was reading one of my favorite suspense writers because it seemed that he’d wandered into the book while I […]
I’m a big believer in critique groups, as I’ve said many times and in many posts. Most of us have trouble looking at our writing objectively. Critique partners can give you an outsider’s take on what you’re doing (or not doing). So nothing I say here should be taken as an attack on critiquing in […]
Lately, I’ve been working my way through the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies for some research. It’s been sort of interesting but also sort of monotonous because so many fairies in so many cultures are basically alike (water fairies, house fairies, forest fairies, etc., etc., etc.). However, there’s one thing I’ve learned (which I actually already […]
Note: This post was supposed to have been published in The Samhellion yesterday. For reasons that aren’t clear to me, it never made it up there. So here it is today where I can make sure it gets posted! From time to time, I like to examine the criticisms that are aimed at romance by […]
I first read Gone With the Wind when I was in middle school. One of the girls in my English class recommended it, and I got a copy from the library. Like a lot of readers, I was totally engrossed—I remember not wanting to put the book down for about a week as I read […]
I just stopped reading a novel by an author I like a lot because the heroine got a disastrous dye job. Now that may not mean much in itself, but let me give you some context. She’d also discovered her boyfriend had cheated on her, her sister had moved in with her and made a […]
Jane Haddam, the author of the Gregor Demarkian series, has a really interesting blog post about the problems of incorporating social issues into books. Her books are mysteries, and they frequently address social problems like homelessness and (in her latest) teaching intelligent design. I don’t think romances run into this quite as much as mysteries […]
For some reason, I’ve been reading a lot of serial killer novels lately, even though I’m not a huge serial killer fan. As I’ve said elsewhere, I find them less interesting than other types of villains. But the thrillers I’ve been reading over the past couple of months all feature serial killers with various levels […]
So here I am, writing the millionth blog entry about What Judges Want In Contests. Mine probably won’t be much more helpful than the other 999,999, but after reading a few recent contest entries, I feel the need to get something off my chest. So herewith I provide some items for all contest entrants to […]
I used to be a writing teacher in my other life. I never taught creative writing but I did teach freshman composition, technical writing, and writing for the Web. One of the most useful things I picked up in my years on the front lines was an introduction to the writing process. A little background […]
