Nothing beats the excitement of beginning a book. Whether you are starting a new story, opening a recommended read, or revisiting a favorite novel, the sheer pleasure of those first lines is hard to quantify. While researching for a cozy, I came across this excerpt from a website dedicated to Ms. Christie’s works. I wanted …
What do I need to reach the delicious writing goal? You need a host of fresh characters, imaginative plotting, soupçon of back-story, descriptive settings, minimal but creative description, tension leading up to conflict, theme, subtext, allusion, pacing, climax, resolution, logic, whimsy, surprise, and prose.
Part of my writing discipline includes jotting down things children say. They are a great source of inspiration, humor, and wisdom.
I just finished writing cozy mystery #18, so let me try and answer this. But first the question, what is a cozy? A cozy is a mystery with certain ingredients. First of course, there’s the protagonist who must be an amateur. This amateur often has friends who are law enforcement of some kind, but they …
After my grandfather’s death, I helped my mother sort through her father’s trunk. Stuck inside were ration cards from the early 1900s with pencil scribbles in his familiar hand. Written no doubt during WWI by firelight and faded almost beyond recognition.
