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
Incident on a Small Colony by Kristine Smith Jani Kilian–broke, tired, and on the run from the Commonwealth Service–hopes that a short stint working at a shipping company on an out-of-the-way colonial station will provide her some things she badly … 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
Amber Affairs Crystal Magic 6 by Patricia Rice Once a childhood TV star, now a tarot reader in the town of Hillvale–home of 325 people and countless ghosts–Amber Abercrombie is content now that she’s escaped the horror of her stage … Continue reading
Revenge of the Killer Flamingos MJ’s Dys-Daze Mysteries One by Patricia Burroughs A-D-H-D! Oh! Look! A Mystery! MJ O’Malley is impulsive, easily distractible, and even more easily bored. But when a hot lawyer hires her to create a flash mob … 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.
Continue readingAzure Secrets Crystal Magic 5 by Patricia Rice After a childhood of being tossed from foster homes for claiming she can detect liars by their scent, Fiona Malcolm McDonald does her best to conceal her secret these days. But when … Continue reading
Between Christmas and New Year’s, Ellen Rosings travels a landscape of doubt. Can she and Tony truly forge a permanent relationship, and will their families support or oppose their intention to marry?
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