Dean Robertson's Blog
May 25, 2018
THOTS and Everything Else–from Blogger, Sheila Moran Dinwiddie.
THOTS And other contributions to the state of THE UNION ? ? A Blog by Sheila Dinwiddie When I first met Sheila Dinwiddie, she was sad and writing poetry. At my house yesterday, she was looking for the theme for her life, and writing haiku. A month ago, Sheila talked to me [...]
May 6, 2018
Choosing the Perfect Pair of Boots: Not for the Faint of Heart
In July of 2015 a favorite pair of short, sassy, pale green leather waterproof boots finally collapsed after years of good use. The shoe repair shop down the street told me they couldn’t be fixed. Because of problems with my spine, I am very limited in the brands of shoes I can wear. In fact, [...]
April 25, 2018
Bombshell: A Look at Hedy Lamarr by Ellen Bunton
She was one of the most beautiful women ever to appear on screen and she epitomized the glamour of Classic Hollywood. Yet Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler to Jewish parents on Nov. 9, 1914 in Vienna, Austria was more than just a pretty face. As a young child she was fascinated by the [...]
April 17, 2018
Contests for Your Novel, Story, Essay, or Poetry: A Short List
LITERARY CONTESTS: A SHORT LIST TO GET YOU STARTED The first thing I discovered when I searched online for “literary contests,” was that there are an awful lot of them. It was like shopping for toothpaste at Walgreens. I waded through, chose a few at random and, once I got started, have enjoyed the whole [...]
March 29, 2018
Submissions. Stories and Essays
Yes. There are competitions for short stories and essays– in case you’ve written any short stories or essays. An essay is a blog by another name, and you’re reading one right now. With some rewriting of blogs, you can produce a piece of short non-fiction, aka, an essay, and submit it all over the place. [...]
The Mysteries of Writing a Mystery: Patricia Allison’s Deke and Loomis Series
A BLOG ABOUT WRITING BY ALISON DANIELS When they compile the lists of the best-selling authors of all time, Dame Agatha Christie is always either number one or second only to Shakespeare. I have never had cause to doubt it. I would think that at least one of her two very different detectives could satisfy [...]
March 25, 2018
Submissions. The Novel
Having overcome my near paralyzing anxiety about submitting my novel to two contests, I submitted it to three, one of which I had deleted from my list two months ago because I thought their attitude was, well, snotty. Maybe snooty. All the text on their site was a flashback to the very worst days of [...]
March 4, 2018
What you do is you write the Author’s Note, read up on the details of the contests, then ask your friend, Alison, to read the manuscript. After that, you won’t have to worry about what to do because Alison will suggest one or two additional chapters you co
As a kind of footnote to last month’s blog about titles, I have–yes, I really have–changed the title for what I hope will be the final time. To recap: My Name is Emily Cade Ainsworth was followed by The Bustle in a House, and then by The Queens, any one of which is a perfectly adequate title. [...]
February 19, 2018
What do you do when there’s nothing left but the Author’s Note and a couple of contests you’re afraid to enter and you didn’t expect to be here for another six months?
My first instinct is that I am not, in fact, really “here,” by which I mean that I am only fooling myself that what I’ve written is anything even close to a completed manuscript, that actually I’ve been delusional all along as I’ve published–with a publisher and by myself–these 250-300 page books and told myself [...]
January 16, 2018
Snowed In: Is it possible to spend too much time with your novel?
Looking out my old casement windows the morning after the big snow For nearly a week now I have been confined to my apartment, too wise to take a chance on the icy sidewalks. My balance has gotten bad in the last few years, and I simply don’t dare risk falling. At my age, [...]
