Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum

Classic fairy tales are rich veins of fiction fodder. The original Grimm tales were very, very grim — and bloody and gory and scary and wonderful — and even the sanitized tales I grew up with (The Red Fairy Tale Book, etc.) and the squeaky clean Disney animated films have a definite appeal. Fairy tales have all sorts of elements that are also found in good genre fiction: strong heroes and equally powerful (or almost equally powerful) villains, consequences that follow both actions and choices, and strong stories with beginnings, middles and endings — usually happy —plus an occasional moral
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Who’s YOUR Monster?

Classic monsters — vampires, werewolves, mummies, dragons, gargoyles and assorted ghouls — appeal to most of us. We all have favorites. Pick YOUR classic monster. There are plenty of new, and old, stories in each category. At different points I’d have said, with absolute certainty, that I was a vampire girl. But I’ve had phases where a story about a hunky werewolf or a particularly spooky ancient Egyptian mummy might convince me to switch sides. Still, the scariest of monsters are human. In fiction we’ve got some extreme human monsters: Hannibal Lecter (a very smart cannibal), Cruella Deville (she still
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If Music Be the Food of Love

If music be the food of love — play on! Last week I saw a wonderful production of Shakespeare’s 12th Night. It was done in authentic Shakespearian era style with men playing all the roles. The cast included Stephen Fry and Mark Rylance as part of the wonderful ensemble. When the Count begins the show with — “If music be the food of love, play on” — I was struck by the number of Shakespeare-isms that infuse our every day speech. Sometimes I know I’m hearing Shakespeare in ordinary 21st century speech or text and sometimes it simply slips in
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Writers & Characters

Where does the writer end and the character begin? My characters are NOT me. But I do infuse bits and pieces of myself into all of them. I’m not a monster or a killer or, for that matter, a man — and yet I’ve written about monsters, killers and a whole lot of men. Putting myself in the “shoes” of my characters is part of the process, as going inside the character’s head makes their world view real and motivations, actions and relationships make a great deal more sense if you start from the inside and work outward. Of course
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Dr. Jekyll Muse

I’m gearing up for the release of my new MONSTER. It’s a contemporary, romantic suspense novella inspired by the Robert Louis Stevenson classic — “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Having immersed myself in the original, shying away from all the movie versions while I was working on my own, I’m now curious about what other people think of when they hear that famous title. There are so many variations on the seductive Jekyll/Hyde theme. Everything from “Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” with Boris Karloff, and a bunch of Jekyll & Hyde Looney
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Monster Jealousy

Jealousy has led many people to do monstrous things. Everything from locker room pranks that undermine the confidence of a star rookie to murderous former spouses, starts with the green-eyed MONSTER called jealousy. Iago — the prototype human manipulator monster — plays on Othello’s fear of marital betrayal. Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger, But, oh, what damnèd minutes tells he o’er Who dotes, yet doubts— suspects, yet soundly loves! In Mary Shelley’s
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What’s in a Name?

Naming a character is always a challenge. I’ve tried all sorts of methods — from scrambling names from an old address book to finding names in works of literature. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need different M.O.s (modus operandi) for different characters. Although I’ve been known to “base” characters on real people, until very recently I never named a character after that person. The first, and so far only, exception is the bartender named Lisa in my almost-ready-to-e-publish “The Strange Case of Dr. Hyde.” I needed a hotel bar for certain pivotal scenes in the story and, since
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