A.M. Offenwanger's Blog, page 41
November 2, 2016
October 31, 2016
The Editor Pontificates: Show, Don’t Tell
NaNoWriMo is nearly upon us – in fact, as I write this, across a good chunk of the globe the clock has already ticked over the magical line of midnight to November 1st, when you get to shoot out of the starting block and race down the novelling track towards that elusive goal of getting 50,000 words on the page. So I thought this would be a good time to squeeze in another post on the writer’s craft, because of course we all have our heads in our stories and are aiming to make these the best n...
October 27, 2016
On Princes and Princesses
I’m still knee-deep in researching 19th-century Bavaria. It’s a little disconcerting when inside your head, you’re surrounded by ladies in towering hairdos or spaniel curls, wearing great big swoopy gowns; gentlemen in top hats and tail coats; steam trains and horse carriages – and then you look up, and the realities of 21st-century life are staring you in the face. The writer’s dichotomy…
But anyway, there was something I ran across in the course of my research rabbit-trailings. Have you ev...
October 26, 2016
October 24, 2016
A Thousand Rooms: A Guest Post by Helen Jones
Some months ago, my writer friend Helen Jones of Journey to Ambeth was asking if anyone wanted to beta read her latest book, A Thousand Rooms. Yes, please, I said. So she sent it over to me, and I have to say, it’s one of the best indie books I’ve read. And as of yesterday, it’s published! So, in honour of that event, Helen has come over and written a guest post for us here. One of the things she and I have in common is that we’re both Europeans who’ve done a fair bit of travelling, so I aske...
October 21, 2016
Why the Death of Roger Ackroyd Matters
And yet another good post on detective fiction, from Christa at Chorister at Home (it must be the day for it). Her musings shed some light on my own preference for British detective stories over American ones.
American Murder Mystery detective: I’m going to solve this murder because it’s horrible and dramatic and linked to me through my tragic backstory.
English Murder Mystery detective: I’m going to solve this murder because I don’t want to be late to tea.
A while ago we st...
October 20, 2016
In Defense of the Detective Novel
My friend E. L. Bates just wrote this quite excellent piece on the value of detective fiction. I agree with everything she says – and her point about the timeliness of detective novels is an interesting one. Check it out and see what you think.
This essay came out of some thoughts I had on detective novels and their function in society. I’m not sure any of it is terribly earth-shattering–I’m fairly certain it’s all been said before–but it was important to me, so I wrote it all...
October 19, 2016
October 17, 2016
The Princess and the Glass Piano
There once was a princess of Bavaria… No, this isn’t the beginning of a limerick. For one, I’m not much good at rhymes. And for another, this line has too many syllables in it. So, no limerick. Just a little story that I stumbled across in my current research rabbit trails: the story of the Princess Alexandra Amalie of Bavaria.
I was looking up the Gallery of Beauties, a collection of 36 paintings in Nymphenburg Palace in Munich, which I got to see last year on my trip to Germany (pardon the...
