If you’ve ever entered a writing contest, you’ve probably seen remnants of the great font controversy. Some contests nowadays allow writers the choice of Times or Courier, but I’d guess the majority still go with Courier. And writers who choose to use Times run the risk of encountering judges like the ones I ran into […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I’m a big fan of regency romances, although I’ll probably never try to write one (the research involved is mind-boggling). I’m obviously not alone in this, given the sales of people like Julia Quinn, Mary Balogh, and Eloisa James (to mention some of my favorites). Incidentally, let me be clear on this: when I say […]
So do I endorse switching to e-books? Absolutely. Do I endorse getting rid of hard copy altogether? Well, no. Let me tell you about my latest trip. […]
I love old movies, and by that I mean really old movies—movies from the thirties and forties. One mainstay of thirties comedies is the “madcap” heroine. The kook. The flake. The one who keeps doing nutty things that nobody expects. The hero (like Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby or Henry Fonda in The Lady […]
