WWK--Better than ever--Look for the return of blogs by Linda Rodriguez! She's back--on 1/4. Watch for our new blogger Tammy Euliano--debuting on 1/17
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Margaret S. Hamilton's short story, "Killer Weeds," appears in the January 20 edition of Texas Gardener's Seeds: From Our Garden to Yours. Congratulations, Margaret, who, if you follow Facebook know, is a superb gardener herself!
Congratulations to Jennifer J. Chow for garnering a 2021 Lefty Nomination for Best Humorous Mystery Novel. We're crossing our fingers for Jennifer!
Congratulations to Paula Gail Benson whose "Reputation or Soul" has been chosen for Malice Domestic 16: Mystery Most Diabolical anthology to be released this spring.
KM Rockwood's "Stay Safe--Very Safe" appears in this year's 2020 BOULD anthology. Congratulations, KM!
Margaret S. Hamilton's "Dealing at the Dump" appears in Cozy Villages of Death Fall 2020.
Margaret S. Hamilton's "Black Market Baby" and Debra H. Goldstein's "Forensic Magic" appear in Masthead: Best New England Crime Stories Fall 2020.
Jennifer J. Chow's Mimi Lee Reads Between the Lines (interview on WWK on 11/11) released on November 10.
Annette Dashofy signed with agent Dawn Dowdle of the Blue Ridge Literary Agency. Congratulations, Annette!
KM Rockwood's "Secrets To The Grave" has been published in the SinC Chesapeake Chapter's new anthology Invitation To Murder, released by Wildside Press on 10/6.
Susan Van Kirk's Three May Keep A Secret has been republished by Harlequin's Worldwide Mystery. The WWK interview about the book can be accessed here. We're so glad another publisher picked up this series.
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Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Music: Another Tool in the Writer’s Tool Box
Monday, July 30, 2012
Delivering One-Liners
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Tight Writing

Saturday, July 28, 2012
Making a List and Checking It Twice
Friday, July 27, 2012
Review of Books, Crooks and Counselors by Leslie Budewitz
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Summertime and the Livin' is Easy
Those of us who live in the often frigid north look forward to summer "when the livin' is easy." No more coats or boots. No more shoveling snow or driving on icy or snow covered roads. No lengthy dark nights. We look forward to those long, warm, sunny days with flowers blooming, birds singing, vacations, shady walks through the woods, fishing, baseball, picnics, amusement parks, sun ripened tomatoes from the garden, corn on the cob and other pleasures associated with summer that go back to childhood memories.
The time of year that seemed so perfect last winter when I was using a hammer to break ice out of the ponies' water buckets is here, and life is blissful, right? Well, not quite. Now I'm hauling buckets of water to my ponies several times a day. After too much rain this spring and early summer, we're now in drought conditions. Instead of pleasantly warm days,there have been many hot humid days with heat advisories, and I hate hot muggy weather, maybe even more than the cold. It saps my energy. And all that rain we had earlier? Well, the weeds are thriving even though my potted plants, hanging baskets and the new plants I planted this year need lots of water to thrive or even stay alive. I can't worry about the perennial gardens, they're too extensive, but I am watering my vegetable garden every day and praying for rain.
I can wear sneakers for my morning walk in the woods instead of boots, and it's pleasant not plodding through mud or snow, and Maggie doesn't come in the house with muddy paws. The birds aren't quite as vocal as in spring, but there are still bird sounds so those morning walks are perfect. Not quite. Because of the dry weather the mosquitoes aren't bad right now, and that's good, but the deer flies are horrendous. Their buzzing around my head both in the woods and any where near the pond make it miserable, especially when they bite.
Speaking of insects, my nemesis has returned early this year. Japanese beetles. Every year I patrol my garden, sometimes twice a day or more, knocking them off into a jar of water I carry. Roses, grapes, beans and my 'Harry Lauder Walking Stick' bushes are their favorites. So far there aren't as many as other years yet. When I get a fair amount in the jar, I feed them to my hens. They love them.
Last year my vegetable garden was a disaster. Too much rain left me with few tomatoes. Not enough to can. And groundhogs ate almost everything else. This year my vegetable garden is thriving. I've already picked half a dozen ripe tomatoes, not counting the cherry tomatoes I eat off the plants. My tomatoes plants are laden with green and ripening tomatoes. They're a month early. Perfect. I'll be able to can lots of tomatoes for the winter months. Well, maybe not. I'm heading off for a two week vacation with siblings just when I fear most of them will be ripening. It's the same with the cucumbers I was planning to use to make bread and butter pickles. At least I've already picked all the peas and a lot of lettuce, and the beans will probably wait until I return. I'm picking and freezing blueberries now, but many more will ripen when I'm gone.
My siblings planned a July vacation so we'd be back in time to harvest and can our vegetables, at least the three of us in Ohio who plant vegetable gardens. Who was it that said, "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray?" Ending on a positive note, my hundreds of daylilies are absolutely specatacular, the BLT's I'm eating are delicious, and the vacation with my three sisters, brother and brother-in-law will be great fun. They always are.
What do you enjoy about summer - or not?
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
The Illogical English Language
Don't worry, you don't need protection from watermelon chunks . . . I'm talking about when Gallagher points out the absurdity of the English language.
In my day job, there's a cafeteria where the daily specials get posted on a chalkboard. The people who run the cafeteria are not from this country, so English is a second (or maybe third) language for them. Because of that, sometimes the board will say that a Ham and Chedder sandwich (or something similar) is available for lunch that day. While that seems minor, when it says we're having Sweat & Sour Chicken for lunch, the problem becomes very unappetizing.
But I don't see it as their fault. E-a-t is pronounced "eet," so it makes sense that they would think s-w-e-a-t sounds similar. It's our lexicon that's messed up.
When I lived in Prague, I took a course so I could teach English as a Foreign Language (or EFL). As part of the class, we had to do some on-hand training with actual Czech students (both children and adults), to learn firsthand the difficulties that we might encounter in our new careers. It took me a very short while to realize I wouldn't be a good EFL teacher, because I wasn’t able to answer the questions that students would ask for clarification purposes.
Like, why is t-h-r-o-u-g-h pronounced "threw" (which is another word that means something completely different), but r-o-u-g-h is pronounced "ruff?" And b-o-u-g-h is different still, as "bow" (which is another homonym). During my training, whenever the students would ask me these quite pertinent questions, all I could say is "It doesn't make sense, but that's the way it is."
Now, maybe I would've been able to find the "proper" answers if I had done more research into the etymology of words, but I didn't even fully understand my mother tongue, so I felt very inept in trying to teach it to someone else. I’ve heard that English is one of the hardest languages to teach, and I believe that. There are so many exceptions to nearly all of the rules of our collective vocabulary that it’s hard to tell someone to just accept them without question, when the words in their native tongue follow that language’s rules quite precisely.
Even now, all I remember of my education was that we were told to memorize the pronunciations of the words, and not question them. There’s even that childhood rhyme “I before E, except after C . . .” that’s used to teach us how to spell. And even that rule has some exceptions to it.
*Side note, why do you remove the "o" from "pronounce" in order to make a "pronunciation?"*
I'm sure I don't have the answers to these questions, and it would probably hurt my brain to try to figure them all out. I just have to keep on my toes when reading my company's daily lunch board, and make allowances for the kooky rules of English.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Writer Watches Westerns
Westerns gave me my first taste of historical accuracy. Sky King had an airplane and Roy Rogers had a jeep. They weren't trying to portray the golden age of cowboys. The Lone Ranger and Paladin were firmly set in a specific period and you never saw a modern appliance. Women's clothing was a dead giveaway. I would set something in the 1870s in my mind, only to have a woman walk through in a calf length skirt and giant shoulder pads. Many shows tried to be ambiguous about the time period. Men's clothing never changed. Women wore riding skirts that came into fashion in the 1870s and are still popular today.
I was a bit older when I learned about the classification of characters. Of course there was the hero, the victim, and the bad guy, the triad which makes up the modern crime story. Most of what I write revolves around these three people. But I began to recognize shadings of all these characters and came up with my own classifications.
The Good Good Guy was the hero. He could do anything always for the best motives. He was self-sacrificing, handsome, and kind. He generally treated women as fragile creatures who needed protection. Marshal Dillon was the ultimate good guy. And he knew how to ride a horse. The Bad Good Guy was the devils advocate who, while a friend or supporter of the hero, acted from base or selfish motives. The banker really did want the rail road to come to town even if it destroyed the farms of the poor. The rancher professed the good of the town while secretly plotting to get the water rights. The coward gave in to pressure from the bad guys to spy on the hero. He was selfish, cowardly, and generally not a nice person. The hero likes him because the hero had a big heart or because the hero expects him to grow up and become a man. Little Joe on Bonanza sometimes played this role by behaving impulsively or stupidly. Then the family had to rescue him.
The Bad Bad Guy was the evil doer, the man who rustled cattle, hurt women, stole money, burned down farmsteads, and terrorized the town. He got his comeuppance by the end of the show. Or he may have been the Moriarity of the West, to appear often as the root of crime like Dr. Loveless in Wild Wild West. The Good Bad Guy was on the side of evil, with a yen for the good side. The whore with the heart of gold, the young man led astray by the BBG, who may be a relative. He may rat out the BBG, or switch sides. He frequently end up dead by the closing credits. It's hard to come up with an example here since they most often ended up dead. Any suggestions? Because westerns were short the whole plot had to fit into a measured story line. Most of the elements weren't well fleshed out, which made them evident to a beginning writer. In time I learned to turn the two dimensional brother of the villain into a real person who didn't have to be killed to make the plot work. I've been re-watching some of these on the Western Channel, and sure enough they are no more subtle than I remember them to be. I can pick out the four characters as soon as they appear on the screen. But now I am learning other things by watching them. I seem to spend a lot of time assessing the riding ability of the actors.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Creating A Short Story
