I took a Salsa dance class on Monday night. It wasn’t just any class, it was a small class taught by one of the best Latin dancers/dance teachers in New York and it was a follower’s styling class — not a lead & follow and learn new steps kind of environment with partners. It was and hour & a half of gals facing the mirror with wild & crazy moves for improvising on the dance floor. Sure, I have a little Salsa/Mambo in my past, but years of Argentine Tango make those memories seem like prehistoric cave paintings. Still, there
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Vampire Real Estate CONTEST
It’s crunch time for the first Candy’s Monsters Contest! The deadline is Halloween. Since Candy’s Monsters followers live in a wide range of time zones, the final moment of the contest will be midnight on October 31, in the U.S. Pacific time zone. This gives vampire fans and real estate aficionados three extra hours if they live in New York, eight extra hours if they live in Berlin, seven in London, four in Buenos, Aires, two in Dallas, and a whopping eighteen in Melbourne Australia. If you live in Berkley, California — your midnight is the last chance to enter.
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Sleepy Stories
My mother assures me that my peculiar sleeping habits developed early. Insomnia? No, not exactly, but I’ve never been a “good sleeper.” I often have trouble falling asleep and I always have trouble staying asleep for long. For a while, I thought it was because I was afraid I’d miss something. But now, I think my mother’s theory is correct. “You’re just not good at sleeping.” Humans are adaptive creatures, we work night shifts, eat whatever is available in our environments, create mythologies to explain the unexplainable and jet around through various time zones just for fun. (Well the jetting
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Suspense Requires Jeopardy
It’s sounds like a no-brainer, but judging from the majority of romantic suspense and mysteries I’ve read lately, true jeopardy — of any kind — is a rare commodity. I’m singling out romantic suspense because I had to stop mid-way through what began as a fun police procedural/detective novel. (The second in a series that started with a book I read with pleasure and reviewed favorably.) This follow-up novel devolved into a messy soap opera focused on the burning question of — will she make it down the aisle or not? The interesting detective mystery plotline got lost in the
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A Mysterious Woman — A True Tale? Maybe…
“You know what the biggest problem is with American women?” Kevin posed the question as the opening line of tonight’s rant. He was well into his second Guinness and was eyeing the Jameson on the shelf behind the bartender’s back. “The biggest problem with American women is that none of you understand the value of mystery.” Kevin’s purring brogue cloaked his contempt in an almost musical disguise. It had been that accent — along with his rugged build and dark blue eyes — that had invited Agatha to ignore Kevin’s habit of denigrating everything and everyone that was not Irish.
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Halloween in NYC — It’s Costume Time!
When I was a child I loved Halloween costumes so much that I turned my January birthday parties into a second yearly opportunity to dress up with themed costume parties for years & years in a row. I think my best was the time travel party. I was 10, or maybe 11, and made a “suit of armor” from aluminum foil. I repeated that theme — but not that costume — one of Halloween after college. That time, I was a barefoot, medieval troubadour with flowers in my hair — the perfect clothes for meeting a gorgeous Viking. (But since
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Magic OR Brains?
I enjoy paranormal fiction, but reality can be extraordinary, too. Detectives can use deductive reasoning, careful observations and creative thinking to put together the solution to a mystery without the help of supernatural powers. Since I read, and write, conventional mystery fiction AND stories with paranormal elements, I’m conscious of how and when magic fits into the mix. All too often, a magical power becomes the edge that enables detective (amateur or professional) to prevail. I recently read an interesting mystery set in London’s West End Theater District. Being a theater geek, I was charmed by the setting and really
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Who’s Talking? Not the Writer! Anybody but the Writer…
I just read a police procedural style mystery and throughout the novel I was struck by the voice — single voice — used by virtually all the characters in the book. It was astonishing. All the characters were insightful, honest and self-aware. They noted when they were responsible for bad decisions in the past and, in general, all sounded as if they’d spent a great deal of time in therapy. Back-stories were revealed immediately — without deception or even dissembling — and the cops were equally patient and intelligent in all their interactions with suspects and witnesses. It was weird.
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Femme Fatales & Damsels in Distress
I recognized her face and knew I didn’t know her. The slender, actress/model in the gym locker room without make-up and with messy hair still had that “she’s a model” look. It’s not unusual to spot celebrities in my neighborhood. Sometimes it’s the A-list folks, with big names from movies, music, art, TV and theater. But lately I’ve been noticing more and more of these strange but familiar faces. I wasn’t sure where I’d seen her, but I knew she played damsels in distress. She had a look of fragility about her. I was certain she didn’t play an edgy
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Motives Count
There’s a clichéd bit of dialog that often pops up in detective fiction. One character says to the other, “Motives don’t count. It’s only about the evidence.” But in fiction —as in real life — motives do count, and the rationale behind them should be credible. Of course credible is not the same thing as rational. People make irrational choices all the time. It’s the role of the writer to make the irrational actions of characters makes sense to the reader. Maybe it’s in her nature to be blunt and say the wrong thing at the worst possible moment? Maybe
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