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I just finished this dandy volume by Lisa Zunshine, Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. It’s readable, makes a lot of sense, and in Kindle ebook format it is FREE. Writers, go get it.
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February 11, mystery/adventure lovers, my debut mystery novel, THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (Pegasus Crime) releases in trade paperback. I await my author’s copies as I type. I know it’s hard to spring for a hardback novel. I admit I only do … Continue reading
I’m celebrating the February 11 release of the trade paperback edition of THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER starring the inimitable Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko, private eye. In Book View Cafe’s online bookstore, the prequel novelette, “Tinkerbell on Walkabout” is on sale for $1.99 … Continue reading
Before I had quite finished writing the manuscript that became THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (Pegasus Crime, Oct. 2018), I penned detective Gina Miyoko’s genesis story, Tinkerbell on Walkabout, and posted it as a novelette here on Book View Cafe. Some of … Continue reading
I did something really cool a while back. I went to a seminar sponsored by Mystery Writers of America (MWA), an organization I joined after the publication of my first Gina Miyoko Mystery, THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (from Pegasus Crime). The seminar … Continue reading
In the first part of MacGuffin or Grail, I suggested a set of criteria for judging whether your particular plot device was one or the other. Having given my protagonists in THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER a panoply of grails, my question … Continue reading
According to Webster’s dictionary, a MacGuffin (McGuffin or maguffin, as you prefer) is: ”an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance.” (emphasis mine) … Continue reading
Timepiece (Book 1 of the Keeping Time Trilogy) by Heather Albano (Stillpoint Digital Press Prometheus) The concept: Jane Austen-style characters travel through time to keep Frankenstein’s monsters from saving the Battle of Waterloo and transforming Victorian London into a nightmare of … Continue reading
”Crime doesn’t pay…enough” is the motto of Mystery Writers of America (MWA), an organization I joined after the publication of my debut mystery-adventure novel, THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (from Pegasus Crime). The first thing I discovered about MWA was that it … Continue reading
A sense of place plays a critical role in determining whether a reader “gets into” a story or not. Good place names can lend an aura of reality to even the most fictional of places. Conversely, an obviously made up place name in a story that pretends at reality can make a location that seems perfectly real to the author seem perfectly ridiculous to the reader.
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