Lena put it together first. She was playing with the moon phase App on her iPhone during Professor Adler’s lecture on Spinoza, and realized that the professor never scheduled anything on the evenings, or even the late afternoons, of full moons. “Maybe he’s a werewolf?” Lena giggled as she posed her question. She’d already asked Rado to email her his class notes as they shared a late, post-class breakfast in the cafeteria. He never refused her. She was his best friend and, as far as Rado was concerned, she was the prettiest girl on campus. “Not one full moon?” Rado
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Happy Merry Madness
Enjoy the holidays! I’ll be back with twice weekly MONSTER MEDITATIONS in January 2015. Keep an eye on the site for new contests, new pages & in general, lots of NEW in the NEW YEAR.
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Show Don’t Tell
“Show don’t tell,” is the advice authors give and get on a regular basis. It’s not easy to do, but it’s easy to say. This morning I stumbled on a SHOW that TOLD me a great deal. You meet all sorts of people in a locker room at a gym. Some are very nice. Others are not nice at all. Most of the time the women at my gym are, at the very least, polite if not always super friendly. I’ve had lovely conversations, seen photos of kids & puppies on phones and learned where to buy flip-flops in January
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2014 — The Year in Books
What were the best, most intriguing, most surprising, most entertaining… books you read in 2014? I spent the year mixing it up, with books put out by indie authors & by conventional publishers, and in a wide range of genres, from detective stories and historical dramas to steampunk and all stripes of the supernatural. Highlights of the year include: “I Am Livia” by Phyllis T. Smith In “I Claudius” Livia is a villainous schemer, but this time the story is told from her point-of-view and I got happily lost in her version of Imperial Rome. “The Crime
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Walk Like This…
New York is a walking city and lately, while I’m walking from place to place, I’ve been observing the way people walk. A walk reveals a great deal — attitude, age, health, personality and much more. Sometimes I can identify tourists (and often where they are from) by the way they walk with companions. Tourists from non-walking U.S. cities maintain a lot of space between the members of their family. They spread out and amble; and they are often perplexed when I race by them or weave between them. In some cultures best friends or grown children and parents routinely
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What She Wore
Descriptions of characters are the bedrock of fiction. Clothes are an essential component of these descriptions for many authors. Romance novelists may linger over the ball gown of a debutant, but they are not alone. All sorts of writers rely on clothing to help shape initial impressions or to place a character into a particular context. James M. Cain introduced his ultimate noir femme fatale with this classic first person narrative in “Double Indemnity.” “A reputable agent don’t get mixed up in stuff like that, but she was walking around the room, and I saw something I hadn’t noticed before.
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Fiction ROCKS!
I read my share of non-fiction (history, biography, social commentary, humor, memoirs, etc.) and have been known to see documentary films in movie theaters — just because the subject is compelling. BUT FICTION ROCKS! Genre fiction, literary fiction, classic & contemporary fiction, short stories, novellas and novels are the books I seek out most often. That’s why it’s not a surprise that I prefer scripted dramas (detective shows in particular) when it comes to TV and why I find TV schedules chock full of “reality” TV mystifying. Do I watch any “reality” programming? Yes, I watch cooking shows. I even
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Vampire Real Estate Contest WINNER!!!
And the winner is… Gale! I felt a tingle of inspiration run up my spine when I read Gale C.’s description of the Loew’s Paradise Theater on the Grand Concourse. The idea of a vampire living in an ornate and extravagant, old-fashioned movie palace is elegant and invites a great story. I’m not sure if this vampire tale will take place in her particular historic theater or, perhaps, in another one of the grand buildings built when everyone went to the movies. As I develop the idea, I’ll see… Gale will receive her $20 Amazon e-book spending spree AND an
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