We all have things that give us the creeps. Spiders, snakes and RATS are three of the most popular scary creatures. (Rats are my top scary creatures. I’m not crazy about mice, but rats… I’ve been known to give wide berth to construction sites because of rats! Yikes…) As a writer, I’ve given some thought to how these creatures achieve their out-of-proportion fearsome scare factor. Not being afraid of spiders, I have developed a theory. It’s the quality of the creatures’ movements. Spiders are quiet and can appear out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly. I was afraid of
Read More
Childhood Heroes
In a post last week I mentioned how my childhood admiration of Diana Rigg in ‘The Avengers’ led me to study martial arts in my 20s and early 30s. This got me thinking about childhood heroes and how & why we chose people or characters to idealize. Our heroes influence the direction of our lives and, for better or worse, provide role models that compete with the messages our parents try to impart. Overall, I think my parents succeeded in communicating the importance of art in a good life, that compassion and tolerance are more important than the winning argument,
Read More
Detecting in Words & Actions
Nope, this is not a variation on the show don’t tell mantra. Today I’m straying from the written word, to its dramatic cousin—the TV & movie detective. Home with the flu means streaming video. I ran through the entire new season of “Crossing Borders” enjoying every minute. I love racing through familiar locations (Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, etc.) and Donald Sutherland as the tireless prosecutor in the International Criminal Court. Of course the downside of binge watching with the flu is that the series ends before the virus clears your system. I revisited “Midsomer Mysteries”; watched too many episodes of “Criminal
Read More
Sharp Objects and Cutting Words
I don’t have a great deal of experience with violence and even less with weapons, so I’m sure my search history is suspicious. Is she planning a murder? Or is she planning a murder mystery? The latter of course! Once in a while I’ve drawn on my actual martial arts experience. Back in the day I received my black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Yes, little 5’1” me with nary a visible muscle and no sports background made it through the arduous black belt test after passing slowly through the ranks. It started with my childhood dream of growing up
Read More
Artful Inspirations
Travel broadens perspective and deepens understanding of home. Sounds like a boring platitude, but it’s true. I love traveling. The people and things I see, discover and encounter when I travel all inspire my fiction. Unfortunately, I can’t travel every time I want an adventure, so I have to explore turf closer to home. This usually means traipsing through some art galleries or visiting one of the many museums in New York. Art inspires me, but it’s not a straight-ahead 1 + 1 = 2. It’s more like a magic trick, with distractions and illusions. Art shakes things up, changes
Read More
Telling Too Much—Expository Dialog
The most popular advice to writers is “show, don’t tell.” Show the character’s anger in how he holds a pen in a death grip. Show the sparks between two potential lovers as they meet for the first time. Show the anxiety as the protagonist pauses before opening a door. Don’t blah, blah, blah about it all. The idea is to slip the necessary exposition into the storytelling so that the story doesn’t get weighed down. There’s a variation on the show/don’t tell theme that I am exploring. It’s how dialog gets used—and misused—to present information to the reader. For some
Read More
Words Redux
In a recent Monster Meditation I pondered my infatuation with certain words. Loving some words has its dark side—dislike or frustration with others. Some of the words I’ve always adored have taken on new meanings or new associations that end—or pause—my infatuation. Iconic is a fabulous word. Phrases like: his iconic performance as the master spy OR her iconic photograph changed the way people viewed the consequences of war, just don’t sound the same when we are clicking on ICONS every day. An icon was BIG and now, it’s a tiny image at the bottom of your screen. I hope
Read More
Deductive, Inductive & Intuitive
Mystery, suspense and detective fiction are loaded with investigations led by cops, private detectives, forensic pathologists, crime scene investigators, and other specialists in solving mysteries. Whether they sweat witnesses into revelations or rely on careful observations to uncover clues, classic detectives solve mysteries using deductive or induction reasoning. Deductive reasoning goes from the general to the specific. The investigator posits a theory and then looks for supporting evidence. For instance, the manner of the second murder was exactly like the manner of the first murder, so it’s likely that both murders were committed by the same killer, as in general
Read More
Time for Romance
I’ve tried, but I’m not a romance writer. Romantic suspense, mystery with a romantic element, dark comedy with a suggestion of romantic comedy, Gothic with a ghostly romance—YES, but not a pure romance novel. I respect the romance genre and enjoy reading historical romance, romantic suspense and sometimes even the ‘rom coms.’ So far, my experience with contemporary romance has been something between ick and meh with an occasional glimmer of ‘I like these characters but wish they were solving a mystery together and not merely falling in love against a contrived set of odds.’ Still, as a reader, I
Read More
