Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 87

Santa Monster by Josh Stallings

Q: Share memories of being read to. Or stories you read to those close to you. Have you written stories for friends or family, not for publication?

A: I was lucky enough to grow up in a family that loved stories. My mother read us Peter Pan and our father read us Winnie the Pooh. He also read us Catch 22, which might have landed better with my older brother and sister than us younger kids, but that story is for another therapy session. Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales was a holiday stan...

Are you sitting comfortably? by Catriona

Life: Share memories of being read to.

That's not an inappropriate enquiry about colonic health, by the way. That's how Daphne Oxenford used to start "Listen With Mother" on BBC radio when I was wee. Next she'd say "Then I'll begin". After that, we were off! To the 100 Aker Wood, to Narnia, to Toad Hall, to tea with a tiger . . . to heaven.

That was mid-afternoon, just before Woman's Hour. A bit later, towards evening, Jackanory aired on the telly. In its 3,500 episodes (thank you, Wikipedia) it h...

Thinking about Mum... by Cathy Ace

Life: Share memories of being read to. Or stories you read to those close to you. Have you written stories for friends or family, not for publication?

Great question…and great timing. I dare say I am not alone in having memories of both my parents reading to me when I was a small child; the delight of seeing familiar pictures and hearing familiar words being read aloud will endure. The photo at the end of this blog explains why this is great timing...

My favourite book when I was small was Littl...

Life: Share memories of being read to. Or stories you read to those close to you. Have you written stories for friends or family, not for publication?

    Story time. 

    It was my favorite time of the evening. Me, my young son Jake--him in his dinosaur-print pajamas, me in my MSU sweats--a good book shared under a diffused yellow light. The last good, pure, wondrous act of the day. Never mind what kind of workday I may have had. Story time made up for (almost) all of the swamp-donkey steaming crap I may have slogged through in the ad biz, randomly created by empty-suit account executives struggling to turn 2 + 3 into 5; capricious creative...

Time to Read

 Q: : Share memories of being read to. Or stories you read to those close to you. Have you written stories for friends or family, not for publication?

- from Susan

 

Funny, I’m sure I was read to, but when I was really small, my father was in Europe as a WWII radio correspondent and my mother was a radio producer in New York. My rather sent back at least one disc of him talking to me but the disc and my memory of what he said are lost. I can hear my mother’s attractive voice, but she’s gone and I c...

Resurrecting the Dead

by Abir

 “But I really want to use that quote.” Where do you go for legal and copyright advice? Do you ever use public or historical figures in stories? A song lyric? A meme you saw (after fact checking I hope)?

 

 

One of the things about being ‘the Friday guy’ on this blog is that all the clever, pertinent answers to the week’s questions have been provided by my illustrious colleagues already, leaving me, in the graveyard shift, to either come up with a new, not so good way of phrasing pretty much...

Copyright Is Not the Right to Copy by James W. Ziskin

Our question this week is about legal and copyright issues: “But I really want to use that quote.” Where do you go for legal / copyright advice? Do you ever use public or historical figures in stories? A song lyric?

Bombay Monsoon, copyright 2022 James W. Ziskin

Where do I go for legal/copyright advice? To the public domain, of course! No angry authors or songwriters waiting to sue (rightly so, by the way) for infringement of intellectual property. The fact that my books all take place in the past...

Our question this week is about legal and copyright issue...

Our question this week is about legal and copyright issues: “But I really want to use that quote.” Where do you go for legal / copyright advice? Do you ever use public or historical figures in stories? A song lyric?

Where do I go for legal/copyright advice? To the public domain, of course! No angry authors or songwriters waiting to sue (rightly so, by the way) for infringement of intellectual property. The fact that my books all take place in the past makes this strategy a little easier. But book...

Better safe than sorry

“But I really want to use that quote.” Where do you go for legal and copyright advice? Do you ever use public or historical figures in stories? A song lyric? A meme you saw (after fact checking I hope)?

by Dietrich

A few years back, I wrote Zero Avenue, a story which centers around a female punk rocker trying to break into the punk music scene during the late seventies. I wanted to use lines from song lyrics in the chapter titles, having never bumped into copyright issues up until that time. My pu...

Who Said That?

 

Our question this week is about legal and copyright issues: “But I really want to use that quote.” Where do you go for legal / copyright advice? Do you ever use public or historical figures in stories? A song lyric? 
 In my third book, Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek, I had a famous country and western singer, Angel Bright, as a character. You've probably never heard of her. Why? Because I made her up. I also wanted to use lyrics from a famous country and western song in the book but I didn’t want ...