I’m taking a short break from my twice-weekly blog posts. It will be my holiday hiatus. I’ll get back to blogging on Monday, January 2, 2017. Just in time to report for Jury Duty on Tuesday, January 3. Perhaps I’ll get some great new fiction ideas from my jury service? We’ll see. I’ve served before, but the creativity in crime seems endless and, at the very least, I’ll meet more of my fellow New Yorkers—and that’s always an experience! You never know when you’re going to encounter a character worthy of fiction. What will I do during my hiatus? Writing
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Holiday Reading
What are my plans for the holidays? Dining with friends, seeing ‘hot new’ movies, going out dancing, visiting museums, baking cookies, and—reading! Leisure reading is part of my everyday life, but during vacations and through the holidays, it gets a bigger share of my spare time and, sometimes, takes precedence over other typical activities. Given the choice between a good book and an OK movie (play, museum exhibit, shoe sale, etc.) I’m likely to choose the book. It’s just the way I roll. In the time between Christmas and New Years, I plan to finish reading the last episode in
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Holiday Ghost
I was going to write a blog post about cherished holiday stories, but my brain stalled at the very first one—A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It is a classic for so many reasons and it has inspired countless variations on the basic tale of greed, charity, and second chances. When did my brain stall? I stopped as soon as I thought about Jacob Marley. The very first of the ghosts to visit Ebenezer Scrooge, he is the neglected ghost. Jacob Marley does not take Scrooge back in time. He does not reveal the reality of contemporary poverty. And he
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Pretty, Witty, Kitty…
Pretty, witty, kitty… Acclimating to alliterative announcements, and other seductive sounds. The sounds of words—rhyming schemes, alliterations, tongue twisters and other phrases driven by the sound more than the meaning of words are like heady spices in narrative fiction. A little goes a long, long way, but that dash of saffron changes the color of the text! A long time ago, when I was in junior high school, I was in ‘My Client Curley’ by Norman Corwin. It was a staged production of a radio play. It’s wonderful and ridiculous. The premise is simple—a theatrical agent recalls the story of
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Age and Perspective
‘Old & Wise’ OR ‘Old Fool’—that is the question. Age, or to be precise experience, changes an individual’s perspective and a character’s role in a work of fiction. The sage grandpa, the batty old lady next door, the wise matriarch, the silly old fool, the elderly voice of experience…. There are lots of clichéd characters that put older people into two extreme camps. On one hand they are losing it (perhaps through dementia) and on the other hand they are the voice of reasoned, experience in the midst of anxious, reactive younger characters unable to see the forest for the
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