Zestful Blog Post #300 Before I get into this post, I want you to know I’ll be teaching online this coming Saturday, January 26, in the Writer's Digest Virtual Conference for Novelists. Mine is the kickoff slot, at 1 p.m. My one-hour presentation will be “Supercharge Your Plot.” This is the earliest notice I can give, which I know isn’t much. But we’ll have a good time, so consider joining me and the other fine presenters. I might also note that Royal Caribbean canceled the sail date of the mystery-writing / forensics cruise I was so excited about, due to mechanical issues with the ship and ..read more

Zestful Blog Post #299 This post is dedicated to Katy Deutermann, who last Saturday passed from this life to the next after a sudden fierce illness. She was an avid reader of this blog and a fan of my books. And along with her husband Steve, she was a special and much-admired friend. Hi, Steve. (Who remains a special and much-admired friend.) Most of us have lost comrades/acquaintances at a young age. A few of our schoolmates, perhaps, didn’t live to see their 20thbirthday. Grandma and Grandpa go, then our parents. Along the way, you lose a friend or two before their time. God forbid you ev ..read more

Zestful Blog Post #298 [This week’s blog is a meaty excerpt from my article in the current Writer’s Digest magazine, February, 2019.] I didn’t know it, but I was mentally ill until about age 16. Anybody queer was considered mentally ill until 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association removed the diagnosis of homosexuality as a disorder (though ‘sexual orientation disturbance’ endured in the DSM until 1987). Like millions of LGBT children and adults, I knew I was different, and not in a socially acceptable way. We didn’t even know there were millions of us. We thought maybe we were the ..read more

Zestful Blog Post #297 [I constructed the following story from usages and spellings I found while browsing on Reddit. If you’re not familiar with Reddit, it is the current most interesting social media platform, and happens to be populated largely by guys in their teens and 20s.] I was watching the playoffs when an ad came on for some new car. The main person in the ad was a famous movie star who has turned into nothing but a corporate shrill. You know who I’m talking about: stalky build, wearing a sole patch, which are so last week, right? His last picture was a real dousey, take my word f ..read more

Zestful Blog Post #296 One day when I was a little kid, I was feeding my budding morbid fascination by looking at pictures in LIFE magazine of a terrible accident involving the Flying Wallendas. They were a circus high-wire act, their breathtaking finale being a seven-person pyramid on the wire, with no safety net. During a performance in Detroit, my hometown, one of the performers lost his balance and the pyramid collapsed, killing two and paralyzing another. My mother, passing by, remarked, “You know, you’re related to them.” I was dumbfounded, but no more information was forthcoming. Eve ..read more

Zestful Blog Post #295 One day a few months ago, a pair of swans (pictured below) appeared in the pond across from our upstairs window. We were like, WTF? That is so cool! We began watching the huge gorgeous birds avidly as we got ready for our day. Marcia, particularly, was enchanted, and set out to know how the swans got there. After some sleuthing, she learned that our neighbors across the way (strangers to us) decided they wanted swans. Their house backs up to the pond, which is the property of a golf course. Our houses border the course. The neighbors checked with the golf course manag ..read more

Zestful Blog Post #294 Exploitation Works Exploitation is a thing, and it can be used. I wrote about this a few years ago, but want to give you some more specifics here. There are successful authors who appeal to the deepest-held beliefs / prejudices / yearnings of their audiences, once they’ve found them. Exploitation feeds on and encourages the time-honored us-versus-them dynamic. That’s not a comfortable dynamic for everyone all the time, but it resonates somewhere in every human heart. A simple example might be a young adult book wherein a brave, outrageous cadre of students overthrows ..read more

Zestful Blog Post #293 A few weeks ago Marcia and I went to the local medieval fair and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We stopped to watch one of the games, where you slam a steel pad with a sledgehammer to make a heavy slug ride up a vertical rail. The harder you hit it, the higher the slug flies, the chief goal being to make the slug strike the bell at the top, producing a ringing sound that attracts the attention of all nearby, who gaze admiringly at absolute strength personified. You buy five tries for a dollar or a shilling or a peck of meal or whatever. A young teenager was trying. He r ..read more

Zestful Blog Post #292 I’m always suspicious of anyone who claims to “like people.” Because, my gosh, what a motley assortment we are. As writers have been told a thousand times, the best fiction is character-driven. We know that, and we prove it to ourselves over and over. Which do you remember better, the sequence of events surrounding the stolen gold in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or the feeling Huck and Jim had for each other? (If you’re sitting there thinking, “What stolen gold?”, then I rest my case and can knock off early for a beverage and a snack.) Katherine Anne Porter sa ..read more

Zestful Blog Post #291 Warmest wishes to you and yours for a very happy Thanksgiving. Beyond health, family, friends, this imperfect gorgeous country, and Marcia, I’m thankful for: ·       My readers and their parents for having given birth to them, and this means you, dear blog friend ·       Russet apples ·       My mechanic ·       My students at Ringling College of Art and Design who take my class seriously ·       Godiva Pearls · &nb ..read more