I am not a lawyer, accountant, or literary agent, but I do think that seven years working in the trenches of a children’s math magazine at Scholastic taught me a skill that is apparently lost on the accounts payable clerks who toil for two different literary agents that I will not identify: I know how to multiply a gross figure by a decimal and calculate exactly how much to send me, the freaking author. Maybe you don’t have such problems. You are blessed with an earnest, hardworking, bookish agent who throws her heart and soul into repping you. Her only fault is that she’s a one-woman agency ..read more

To be, or not to be; ay, there's the point. To die, to sleep—is that all? Ay, all. . No, to sleep, to dream—ay, marry, there it goes, For in that dream of death, when we awake, And borne before an everlasting judge, From whence no passenger ever returned, The undiscovered country, at whose sight The happy smile and the accursed damned, But for this, the joyful hope of this, Who'd bear the scorns and flattery of the world, Scorned by the right rich, the rich cursed of the poor, The widow being oppressed, the orphan wronged, The taste of hunger, or a tyrant's reign, And thousand more calamities ..read more

   We went to see The Fall Guy, and it’s terrific.  Not what you’d call deep, by any means, but enormously entertaining.  Some thoughts about that. John Wayne made The Big Trail, directed by Raoul Walsh, in 1930.  It did not, however, to Walsh’s surprise, make Wayne a star.  Watching it, you can see why.  The Big Trail is a good picture, shot in any early version of ‘scope, and by most any yardstick, pretty spectacular.  Wayne, on the other hand, is pretty callow.  He hasn’t really grown into his own shoes.  This doesn’t happen until ..read more

I have a bad cold, so my good friend and fellow editor Donna Andrews has agreed to step in and write today's post. Thank you, and take it away, Donna! --Barb Goffman Three Strikes--You’re Dead!   by Donna Andrews Thank you, SleuthSayers, for giving me a chance to apologize to SJ Rozan, basketball fan extraordinaire. Marcia Talley, Barb Goffman, and I didn’t exactly promise her a hoops story when we recruited her to do the introduction to our sports-themed anthology. But you’d think at least one of our contributors would have been captured by the thrill of a fast-paced court battle, the l ..read more

There’s this great scene in the old Star Trek TV show where McCoy treats a silicone-based life form by whipping up some kind of cementitious slurry, which he uses to heal the creature’s wound.  When it works, McCoy, as surprised as anyone, says, “Sometimes I feel like I could fix a rainy day.” I’ve used that line myself on the rare occasion I succeed with some forlornly impossible repair.  It’s a boast that haunts me, since I feel it brings on later failure.  You could call that superstitious and you’d be right.  Being a retired person, much of what I do is building, mainte ..read more

Apparently this really happened.  You may not be astonished to know that the two criminal masterminds got caught.   ..read more

   I've been writing more short stories than usual lately, and maybe that's the reason most of my recent SleuthSayers posts have leaned toward the "rules" of writing, and fiction writing in particular. Heaven knows there's plenty of advice out there, especially on the subject of grammar and style. Elmore Leonard even wrote a (very small) book about ten of those rules.  What I'm leading up to is, one of those writing rules is the age-old advice to avoid the overuse of adverbs (especially "ly" adverbs) describing speech. Examples: He moaned sadly, She laughed happil ..read more

Ran across something enlightening on YouTube entitled Ernest Hemingway's Favorite Writing Exercise and figured writers would find is as interesting as I found it. In 1934, Ernest Hemingway gave an aspiring writer an exercise to sharpen his observation skills to describe his observations on paper, to train himself to be a better writer. Broken into three steps to "show, don't tell" in writing a story: Closely observe a situation, then retell it in words. Search for what excited you about the action to avoid vagueness in writing. Pay attention to emotions and reactions of others in th ..read more

It's amazing how many people here in South Dakota do not know that on September 28, 1983, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was arrested in Rapid City, South Dakota for possession and ingestion of heroin.  Some backstory: After being sworn in in 1982 as assistant district attorney in Manhattan, RFK Jr. failed the bar exam and resigned in July 1983, saying he needed a rest. Apparently he hadn't shared with anyone, including his employers, the fact that he'd been doing heroin since at least 1969, when he was 15 years old.  (He later told the New Yorker (July 7, 2023), “I was a heroin addict for f ..read more

Two weeks ago I reported on How I Spent My Mystery Writer Vacation at Left Coast Crime in Seattle.  Below you will find some of the words of wisdom I picked up there.  Unfortunately all the context fell off the Space Needle, so you're on your own in that regard. "I want to welcome everyone to the beautiful Northwest and what is also known as the serial killer capital of the world." - Jamie Lee Sogn  "Just for fun, let's actually address the topic of the panel." - Meredith Taylor  "A man wakes up in the afterlife.  It's a Jewish afterlife.  There's nothing there ..read more