I’ve written about spam before, but the stuff continues to exert a strange fascination over me. My most recent crop – no, you wouldn’t have a crop of spam, would you – my most recent cans of spam contained items that seemed to be struggling to become a novel, taking...
After watching the new Harry Potter movie this weekend, a friend asked me why Harry, Ron, and Hermione, while on the run from Snarly Bad Things, kept apparating -- moving about magically -- within the British Isles. All the Snarly Bad Things were UK-based, so why...
Once upon a time, a writer wrote a book, as writers tend to do, and got it published, however unlikely that may seem. Then she sat back and waited for the good stuff that happens to writers who get published: trumpets sound, cherubs strew rose petals and...
I called my agent the other day to give her some good news. Thus: Me: I've had a great idea! I'm going to paste together bits of famous novels, poems, song lyrics, etc., and call it a book. I’ll send it to you tomorrow. Agent: Something something bad idea plagiarize...
As I blog, tweet, and work on a synopsis for my novel Fall Crush, I wonder how writers in earlier ages would have fared with social media. Suppose Thomas Hardy had been required to pitch The Mayor of Casterbridge. “When Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter...
Let's find out if you qualify. Imagine you’re walking by a lake on a gorgeous summer morning, breathing in the mingled scents of lake water and fragrant fir trees, and then you come upon a canoe pulled up at a dock, and you think, “That canoe could have a body in it...