There are certain grammar errors that are like chalk screeching on a blackboard to me. I cringe when I hear them, and it’s all thanks to Peggy Riley Hughes. Mrs. Hughes was my seventh and eighth grade English teacher, a veritable martinet who literally beat grammar into us by smacking a yardstick on her blackboard …Read More
Ten-Second Movie Reviews … by Katherine Valdez
My love of stories started with books and got an adrenaline boost with movies. It’s all storytelling. Read. Watch. Learn. And eat popcorn. Lots of popcorn. Jupiter Ascending I wanted to love this movie. I mean, Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum? Hot. But the Wachowskis skimped on story here, and it shows. Eddie Redmayne, stellar …Read More
I’m Still Here….
Late news flash: There’s a Goodreads giveaway going on for April J. Moore’s wonderful women’s fiction novel, Bobbing for Watermelons. It closes July 26th, so hurry on over and enter. You’ll find the giveaway here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/145646-bobbing-for-watermelons I’ve been a truly delinquent blogger this week. I’m not sure where the week went, but I know I …Read More
Do-Overs … by Patricia Smith Wood
If you could have only one, what would your “do-over” be? Everybody has at least one, right? I’ve thought about that long and hard over the years. For example, my husband Don and I were high school sweethearts. We talked back then about getting married sometime after he graduated from college. But his parents had …Read More
Three Winners
Thanks to Alex J. Cavanaugh, Allan J. Emerson, and Susan Gourley for leaving comments on Robert Spiller‘s guest blog post. I hope you enjoy your copy of Napier’s Bones as much as I did. If you missed Bob’s guest post, Dark Night of the Soul, click here.
Dark Night of the Soul … by Robert Spiller
Van Morrison sings of being Torn Down ala Rimbaud. This experience of finding oneself in the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ is by no means unique to either Van the Man or Arthur Rimbaud, the wonderful French poet. Sinners and saints all speak of falling so low that they have nowhere to go but up. …Read More
Make of it what you will: In defense of challenging the reader in Red Lightning … by Laura Pritchett
My newest novel, Red Lightning, will annoy some people. Yes, I know it, and I suppose I should be sorry. But I am not. Let me explain, if I may: For the first several years I was writing this book, it was “normal”—there was a standard arc, plot, characters, narration—and I just didn’t like it. …Read More
My Favorite City on Earth … by Sarah Wisseman
Siena, Italy: the magical city of medieval towers, pigeons, and a suicidal horse race called the Palio. If you want to test your fear of mobs, hang around after the race with the demented men from the losing contrada, one of seventeen Sienese districts dating back to the Middle Ages. You will witness grown men …Read More
Wrecked … by Scott Graham
A couple of decades ago, I courted trouble when my wife, Sue, and I went on a November backpacking trip into the Mummy Mountain Range in Rocky Mountain National Park. Because it was the off-season, I convinced Sue it would be okay to leave our car in the deserted trailhead parking lot without the required …Read More
Best Way to Market — Be the Biggest Cheerleader … by Alex J. Cavanaugh
This will amuse you – I never wanted to be an author. True story! I wrote some when I was younger, but it was never my goal. I had other passions in my life. But I found that old manuscript in a drawer and decided to rewrite it. Then my wife pushed me to submit …Read More