They say that when your plot starts to flag, you should kill somebody. In the story, I mean. Fine. But if I did that, pretty soon I wouldn’t have any characters left. Now I’m in the last stretch of this book I started a year ago and about the only thing I can think of is a large meteorite wiping out all my characters except for the […]
Another bite of The Onion
When The Onion was new, way back in the ’90s, I used to visit every day. Now I stop by every few weeks or so. Not that the writing has gotten worse; far from it. I just love this gem — even as I lament the fact that it’s so, so true. But that’s the secret of satire, isn’t it? It has to be firmly grounded in […]
The dog days, and "August Heat"
It’s a slow day in the blogosphere, so let’s go to the mail bag. Wait a second … I don’t have a mail bag. I suppose that means it’s time to pull something out of the air. Or my ass. Here in Wichita, we are in the middle of a string of 100-degree days, a string that seems likely to continue through next week. It’s a daunting […]
Setting in fiction: It helps if you live there
The fine blog Detectives Beyond Borders recently had a discussion about the significance of setting in crime fiction. Peter was commenting on an assertion by Clive James that many of today’s international crime novels are so crammed with geographic detail that they are essentially guidebooks. I’ve had the same reaction, most recently to “A Small Death in Lisbon,” where the protagonist’s steps through the city are described […]
Back to the keyboard — but it’s a new one
After a writing hiatus of quite a few months longer than I intended, I’m back to work on what I will refer to as “the book.” I knocked out another 500 words yesterday, and expect to make that the standard day’s output. But since I’ve had these productive impulses before, and since they tend to expire after about a week, I’m employing a few other strategies. First: […]
This just in: The woman can write
I’ve discovered this great new writer: Ruth Rendell. I predict that one day she will sell a lot of books. Seriously, I’m embarrassed to admit that even though I call myself a fan of crime fiction, I had completely ignored the works of Ruth Rendell until about a year ago. I’m even more embarrassed to say that I had deliberately browsed right past her books, mostly because […]
In fiction, short is not always so sweet
One of these days I suppose I should admit that my preferred creative form, short crime fiction, is all but dead. When’s the last time you enjoyed a good detective yarn that was under, say, 8,000 words? I thought so. Me too — even though I like writing short stories, I sure don’t read many of them these days. So why am I stuck on short stories? […]