PBS’s series, Mystery! began airing in 1980 after the public stations’ Masterpiece Theatre sponsor, Mobil, suggested a series of British mysteries, tacking on to the success of Masterpiece versions of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.
My favorite part about the series has to be the animated opening and closing, featuring Edward Gorey cartoons. […]

A few weeks ago, I posted about my pet peeve - overuse of brand names that don’t deepen character or story.
Well, speaking of deepening, I want to deepen this conversation. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about details in fiction.
Poirot, Agatha Christie’s fastidious little detective, likes things just so. So much […]

I was procrastinating writing this week’s blog entry by checking email and I came across one of those annoying forwarded assertions that just sound too…too…too wrong to be right. So, what did I do - sit back and scratch my head and wonder?
No. I just got onto www.snopes.com to check it out. […]

We all know how to structure a story, right? Take a character, plop them down on the bottom of a steep incline and, (aargh!) as they climb, throw obstacle after obstacle at them, one after another, until they (finally - whew!) reach the summit (ta-da!), and fall into a lovely (no loose ends) denouement.
Unless, […]

I’m about to write the check for the rental of a house we’ll be sharing in August at Lake Champlain. August can’t come soon enough, let me tell you.
When I was hashing over what we’ll do during that precious week, aside from going to the Ben and Jerry’s factory and taking a day […]

I’ve been reading a lot of young adult fiction lately. It’s a fabulous pool to dip into. It’s the pool that nearly drowned me twenty-some years ago. I conveniently had a sore throat the morning after every late night spent nearly finishing some wondrous book or another, which allowed me to stay […]

I am hereby announcing a Snow Day. As I don’t feel much like writing a witty post today, I am giving myself a Snow Day. Reasoning? My imagination has white-out. As this is the case, I figure everything I write today will need wite-out. Therefore, the Snow Day.
You too are […]

“Oh, you really lucked out.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve got Valentine’s Day.”
“What? Oh, crap. That’s right. Thursday is Valentine’s Day. Crap.”
Such was the conversation between me and the hubby a couple days ago.
See, people think it’s easier when you’ve got a fixed theme to blog about. Not so, I’ve found. I mean, I […]

Brand names bug me. Nothing screams out of date like a brand name come upon decades later. It’s a cheap ploy to set up a situation as ritzy by naming the cars the valet is parking, the type of champagne drunk and the store at which the protag. bought his wristwatch. It’s […]