Writing Matters

March 3, 2011
Here's an announcement from the Watchung Booksellers website about the upcoming Writing Matters panel, March 25 in Montclair, NJ.  If you're in the area, I hope you'll come by and join the conversation. 

OUR TWO PART WRITING MATTERS PANEL CONCLUDES WITH:

GENRE VERSUS LITERARY FICTION:
MEANINGFUL DIFFERENCE OR FALSE DISTINCTION?

In January over sixty Writing Matters guests joined a panel of novelists
to discuss the question of what makes a novel literary...or not.

Now, we flip flop the question.

On Friday, March 25th, 2011, at 7 pm, our second lineup of authors will
gather to explore the meaning of genre fiction, and whether this
categorization is real or false.

Please join

Jeff Markowitz, author of the Cassie O'Malley mysteries
http://www.jeffmarkowitz.com/

Rick Moss, author of EBOCLOUD
http://www.ebocloud.com/

Chris Redding, author of INCENDIARY
http://www.chrisreddingauthor.com/

Steven Rigolosi, author of the TALES FROM THE BACK PAGE series
http://www.whogetstheapartment.com/

and

Todd Ritter, author of DEATH NOTICE
http://www.toddritteronline.com/

for a night of continued conversation, food, and fun.
 

When Jello Attacks 2

February 23, 2011
It was my first shift as night watchman at the top secret government laboratory.



The earnest young scientist who ran the lab left me with explicit instructions.

One, he said, don't touch any of the experiments.
And, two, and he was quite emphatic here, don't let anyone gain access to the lab.

It was a quiet night, boring, to be honest.  I made my rounds.  I didn't understand any of it, especially the part about how scientists at the lab could use the tiniest of bugs to conduct important gene...
Continue reading...
 

Today seems like a good day for an argument

February 21, 2011
So here's one for movie buffs to kick around.  

With the Oscars a week away, I noticed today on msn, a list of the 10 worst movies to actually win the Oscar for Best Picture.

10.  The Hurt Locker
  9.  A Beautiful Mind
  8.  Driving Miss Daisy
  7.  Rain Man
  6.  Out of Africa
  5.  Oliver
  4.  No Country for Old Men
  3.  Chicago
  2.  The English Patient
  1.  Shakespeare in Love

So what do you think?  Were these movies deserving of their Oscars?  Or were they bad movies that won the Oscar for all...
Continue reading...
 

Courtship in the Age of Viagra

February 14, 2011
Sy looked up from his linguini and white clam sauce and asked, "So ladies, vhat do you t'ink?"  His aging fingers fumbled at his jacket pocket, revealing a bottle of little blue pills.
     Avoiding his lecherous gaze, the twins giggled and continued eating their lobsters.
     "But don'tchou never t'ink you vould vant to try somet'ing just a little different?"
     The twins hid behind their lobster tails, giggling with restraint.  Helen, the older of the two, dressed in a conservative ...
Continue reading...
 

A warm winter week-end in Chicago

February 6, 2011
Some people tell me it's crazy to travel to Chicago the first week-end in February, that the city is too damn cold this time of year.  But I can't imagine anyplace warmer and more hospitable.  I first started coming to Love is Murder in 2005.  I was a brand-new author then, knowing little about the craft, and even less about the business of writing.  I came because a friend told me If you want to be a writer, you have to start going to the places that the real writers go.  And I've been...
Continue reading...
 

Words

January 13, 2011
Words have power.  No.  Words ARE power.  As writers, and as bloggers, we know that to be true.  Our style may be informal, we may dash off a blog now and then, but even in the most random of blog entries (perhaps especially in our most random of blog entries), we choose our words with care.  Because words have meaning.  Denotative and connotative.  Literal and symbolic.

And if we know that to be true, surely, our politicians and political speech writers, our media spokesmen and their staff, o...
Continue reading...
 

Of leather shoes and grape-stained feet

January 11, 2011
The National Geographic Society has just announced the discovery of a six thousand year old winery in an Armenian cave.  It is not the earliest archaeological evidence of wine, but it is the earliest, most complete example of the production of wine.  And it just happens to be located in the same area where the earliest leather shoe was previously unearthed.   

There is a bon mot buried somewhere in that archaeological dig, to be found in the juxtaposition of leather shoe and grape-stained foo...
Continue reading...
 

Advice? We don't need no stinkin' advice!

January 5, 2011
A few of my favorite quotes on writing, from one of my favorite books about writing - Rules of Thumb: 73 authors reveal their fiction writing fixations (edited by Michael Martone and Susan Neville).

"Write before you wake.  Write as you sleep, if at all possible."
Heid E. Erdich, Sleep On It

"Regularity is as helpful with the muse as with the bowels."
John Barth, The Ink-Stained Thumb

"You can start a story with a coincidence, but you cannot end with one."
Michael Martone, Prescriptions/Proscript...
Continue reading...
 

Writing Matters

January 2, 2011
If you're an aspiring writer and you live in the New York/New Jersey area, you should know about the bi-monthly Writing Matters Series hosted by Watchung Booksellers in Montclair NJ.

"Writing Matters is a series of informal panel talks about the craft and business of writing.  Moving beyond a reading or book signing, our purpose is to facilitate a discussion among readers and writers, and to explore the rapidly changing landscape of contemporary publishing." (http://www.watchungbooksellers.com...
Continue reading...
 

The lives of the noble grecians and romans who made the national lampoon insanely great

December 27, 2010
We got two feet of snow overnight, so today has been a good day for reading.  Actually, first it was a good day for digging out from under two feet of snow, but once that was finished, it has been a good day for reading.  I've been exploring two books, similar in many ways, both collections of biographical essays and drawings, of wondrous men (and perhaps, an occasional woman).

After a while though (that is to say, after I poured the first whiskey) I am finding it hard to keep the two books st...
Continue reading...
 

About My Blog


doahsdeer.xanga.com Folks tell me that my blog address is cumbersome, that it's hard to spell and even harder to remember. They may very well be right. Although it's derived from the title of my first mystery, even I can recognize that it's not a user-friendly address. So this page will contain selected entries from that blog. Each entry will include a link back to the original post. Use the link to read comments about the post and to add your own.
Make a Free Website with Yola.