A friend is starting a blog and she asked me to help her make the process easier. I’m in a good position to do this because I’ve learned a great deal from my own mistakes! When I started Candy’s Monsters I had ZERO idea of what I was doing. Since then, I’ve helped a few other bloggers—both individuals and businesses—to get started by creating coherent guidelines. Step One: Determine Frequency I post twice a week. It makes sense to me because I’m a writer and pumping out content is what I do. I suggested that my friend try once a
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Back Home to Write
I love to travel, but coming home has its pleasures, too. During this trip to the Netherlands and Spain, I came up with a bunch of story ideas—sketched out a few and started drafting two of them. I’m sure that there’s more fiction fodder hidden in the photos, notebooks, and memories of my adventures. What will I make of an entire day spent in the buildings and gardens of the Real Alcazar of Seville? It’s a spectacular place with room-after-room of tiled walls, outrageous ceilings, walkways, fountains, meditative spots, tropical plants, and grand archways. Some of the scenes in the
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Hidden in Pictures
Conspiracy theorists see coded communications everywhere. The pattern of a blinking streetlight, the folded page in a library book, the missing card in a deck, and the dis-ordered bottles on the alchemist’s neat shelf—are all great ways to start a mysterious story. If life is not full of “hidden messages” than ART certainly is! You can find subtle, mysterious, and secret messages in bedded in publicly displayed art. You just have to know how to look. Art from many eras contain images that were “read” by the people of that time. There were references to familiar ancient gods, biblical stories,
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Venturing Outside the Comfort Zone
Many years ago I went to a mystery conference with my mother. Russell James was a speaker on one of the panels. To say I was impressed is an understatement. I immediately bought a bunch of his books, including ‘Painting in the Dark.’ (I just found the electronic version on Amazon and it’s now nestling on my Kindle!) When he was asked why he didn’t write a series with recurring characters, he replied that his novels were about the biggest thing that happened in the protagonist’s life. A detective in a series may grow and change, but the credibility of
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While You Were Away…
I’m not even at the mid-point in my trip and I am officially losing touch with my normal reality. I’m focused on the Argentine Tango (Part One of my vacation is a week of dancing at El Corte in Nijmegen, The Netherlands) and my daily concerns at home are falling away. Am I worrying about my mother back in NYC? Yes. She’s 89 and had a stroke last month. The big concerns remain, but the little things—should I order more kitty litter, am I running out of coffee beans, should send a reminder to a freelance client that we should
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Written in the Sky
For eons people believed that the stars & planets in the night sky foretold the future and today many people rely on horoscopes of various kinds to make plans and avoid unlucky days. I’m not interested in debunking or supporting the value of advice derived from the transit of planets. I’m focused on the other storytellers in the sky—the clouds and winds. Some of these stories are based on practical data—the accumulated wisdom of sailors & farmers plus the relatively recent developments in scientific weather tracking & storm prediction. The gray cloud, fat with moisture as it rolls in on
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Travel & Boredom
Do I find traveling boring? No, of course not. I love traveling and I’m writing this on the first full day of my summer adventures in The Netherlands and Spain. But travel involves all sort of boring periods of time. The weather related delays (thunderstorms and a tornado watch) that kept me at Newark Airport for hours and hours and hours before my flight to Amsterdam on Friday, raised boredom to a mind numbing level. I filled some of the time reading (always good), but I allowed myself to experience long stretches of boredom as part of an experiment inspired
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