K.P. Gresham's Blog, page 5
May 27, 2024
A Mind Unhinged
Posted by Kathy Waller
So you start writing your post about the incomparable Josephine Tey’s mystery novels two weeks before it’s due but don’t finish, and then you forget, and a colleague reminds you, but the piece refuses to come together, and the day it’s due, it’s still an embarrassment, and the next day it’s not much better, and you decide, Oh heck, at this point what’s one more day? and you…
May 6, 2024
Closely Observed!…
I’d love to hear about your favorite “closely observed” book passages.
by Helen Currie Foster
When you read a passage and experience words that strikes home forcefully–so forcefully that you almost gasp–what did the writer do that moved you so?
I’m collecting examples. For my husband it’s John Steinbeck’s tide pool in Cannery Row:
“…When the tide goes out the little water world becomes quiet and lovely. The sea is very clear and the bottom becomes fantastic with…
April 30, 2024
THE POWER OF THE UNKNOWN
by Francine Paino, a.k.a. F. Della Notte
Readers, what’s your pleasure? Do you prefer romance, adventure, family sagas, historical fiction, or fantasy? The list goes on and on, but in most cases, the mystery of not knowing what will happen is a strong underlying driver of any story.
Revelations in any genre can be uplifting or not. It may be frightening, too, but the power of the unknown…
April 22, 2024
I’ve Been Waterin’ the Yahd
By M. K. Waller
The following post appeared on my personal blog, Telling the Truth, Mainly, in April 2022. But the story of my writing process is always worth a retelling. Please read on.
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Sometime back in the 1930s, my grandmother picked up the telephone receiver just in time to hear the Methodist minister’s wife, on the party line, drawl, “I am just wo-ahn out. I’ve been waterin’…
April 1, 2024
THE NAME OF THE ROSE IS—wait, how do you pronounce that?
BY HELEN CURRIE FOSTER
April 1! It’s spring, with a riot of bluebonnets this year.
Plus paintbrush! Winecup! Verbena! Prairie celestials (so lovely)!
And within the fence, safe from our marauding burros, the roses are opening their petals and sharing their beauty. Humans have been growing and hybridizing roses for millenia. I favor those with deep rose fragrance. This year the sniff prize…
March 26, 2024
ALL THE MAGIC IS NOT ON STAGE
by Francine Paino, a.k.a. F. Della Notte
I love movies, and I’m sure there are plenty of difficulties for actors to keep the emotions required of a scene fresh from take to take and working out of the order the story. But it’s live theater that hold a magical universe for me, beginning with the fact that the actor on stage doesn’t have the benefit of do-overs. If he/she makes a mistake, he/she…
March 18, 2024
True Crime: Update on the Poff Case
by Kathy Waller
In November 2019, a Texas woman was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for mailing explosive devices to President Barak Obama and Governor Greg Abbot. The crime had occurred in October 2016. The break: Investigators found a cat hair under the address label on one of the packages and matched it to one of the suspect’s cats. The following post, reprinted from the blog Telling…
February 26, 2024
A Little Burro Therapy
By Helen Currie Foster
The three burros who live with Alice MacDonald Greer, lawyer/amateur sleuth protagonist of my Texas Hill Country legal thrillers, bear a strong resemblance to the three burros who rule our patch of the Hill Country.
We manage our small piece of the planet for native grasses and birds under the county Wildlife Management Program. Today I received our spring box of blue…
February 7, 2024
MY CREATIVE KITCHEN - Conversations with My Muse
Francine Paino, a.k.a. F. Della Notte
I sat with my cup of café e latte and looked around. The paper with the picture on the kitchen table intrigued me. No, I thought. Gotta clean this place first. I chugged my cup of coffee, grabbed my cleaning supplies, and began. While I twisted and turned, scrubbing granite countertops to a gleam, something whizzed past my eye – a cup of espresso splashed…
January 29, 2024
A New Story Coming Soon and Updates
By N.M. Cedeño
I have a couple stories pending publication right now. One of the publishers revealed an author list and book cover this month.
My story “The Ghostly Lady’s Curse” is scheduled to be published in an anthology entitled Detectives, Sleuths, and Nosy Neighbors from Inkd Publishing. The publisher announced the author line-up for the anthology this month. You can see the announcement…
