Barbara Fradkin's Blog, page 2

Dogs in story

Steve posted last week about creating character in stories and the way character influences behaviour and reactions. No need for a lengthy list of adjectives -- shy, fearful, arrogant -- just show us! He then described the very different behaviour of his two dogs. Being the owner of two dogs, I can relate! Furthermore, how people react to dogs tells a lot about their character, so they are a

Forest Fairy Surprise

by Catherine DiltsThere is delight in seeingsomething you didn’t expect. Don’t warn me ahead of time. I want to besurprised.We visited my husband’s bestfriend in Boise, Idaho, last month. He took us on walking trails he regularlyuses. The trek was a reminder of how we tend to become dulled to our familiarsurroundings. I stopped several times to marvelat the scenery. The bridge over

How Long Should Your Novel Be?

 by Thomas KiesI’ve been reading the effusive reviews for a novel called Tom’s Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski. The critics are ecstatic. The book was just released this month and clocks in at 1,232 pages. Let me repeat that.  1, 234 pages.  This isn’t official, but my rough estimate for the word count for Tom’s Crossing is 360,000.  That’s unusual. When I talk

It's Spooky Season!

 by Sybil JohnsonI don’t remember hearing the term “Spooky Season” much before this year. I suspect I have not been paying attention. I rather like it. According to Google, there are instances of the term being used in newspapers in the early 1900s referring to a season when mysterious events happened. But our current use of it as the time around Halloween dates to the 1990s or so and became

Halloween Antics

    by Charlotte Hinger                          She's gone. She disappeared. She was the central character in my neighbor's elaborate Halloween display last year. Did she and her poor baby find their way to an unmarked grave? All of her cowboy companions have vanished too.         &

Moving Forward Toward Indie

Hello from Portland, Maine. Shelley here, waving, but with hopefully a bit more flesh on my bones than the skeleton in the photo below. This was taken on a walk around the arts district in Portland on a glorious fall day. Hubby Craig and I had a marvelous time visiting an artist's studio, breakfast at the Miss Portland Diner, a few hours at the Portland Museum of Art, a drink at Novel Book

75 Years of Peanuts

 by Sybil JohnsonMy cataract surgeries are done. Sorry I missed my last posting day. My eyes were adjusting to their new reality. Honestly, they’re still adjusting so working on a computer is a little difficult right now. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Today I’m celebrating the Peanuts comic strip. October 2, 2025 marked 75 years since the first strip appeared in newspapers (October

Writing the Difficult Obituary

 Dr. Quintard Taylor, died September 26, 2025, in Houston, Texas. He was 76 years old. Johnny D. Boggs, editor-in-chief of Roundup asked me to write a tribute for publication in the magazine. It was hard for me to do because of my admiration of Dr. Taylor. He was simply the finest historian I've ever known. His friends and colleagues used old familiar words to describe their grief over

A Book Recommendation

By Steve Pease/Michael Chandos Does it seem logical to you that writers of Private Eye mysteries should have real-life experience as a PI? But that's not often the case. Famously, Samuel Dashiell Hammett worked the mean streets in San Francisco for Pinkerton before he started to write, and his books are noted for their realism, true human grime and base human motivations, and excellent

Calling Dr. Freud, or Novel Writing for Fun and Psychoanalysis

 Over the course of my novel-writing career, it has occurred to me to wonder about the psychology of those of us who create whole worlds on paper and populate them with characters who do more or less what we want them to do. Are we indulging in self-psychoanalysis without being aware of it? I've often noted that what readers say about my books tells me more about them than it does about the