Tales Dark and Light
Terms like "Chick Lit" and "Romance" suggest light reading, though these genres include serious stories as well. Other book categories automatically call up visions of brooding characters, bleak settings, and…
Jack Whyte
From Scotland and now living in Canada, Jack Whyte writes fictionalized accounts of historical events and thereby brings long-dead figures to life. In Uther, he describes a realistic Camulod (Camelot)…
Dialogue
One online guru I know has advised writers to avoid using a lot of dialogue in a book. But being a person reliant on auditory as well as visual input,…
Thoughtful Characters
Stories have an advantage over real life in one respect: Writers can express what the characters are thinking―at least the primary characters if not all of them. Sometimes this is…
Tom Clancy
My personal favourite Clancy books are the Jack Ryan tales, though I have sampled his other series as well. While I have not read The Hunt for Red October, I…
So Many Books!
I am astounded, and humbled, when I see the long, long list of books written by some authors. Diana Palmer and Nigel Tranter come to mind, although they are by…
Terri DuLong
Secrets on Cedar Key is one instalment of the Cedar Key Novels. Whether described as Chick Lit or Women's Fiction, it is definitely a book that would appeal to women…
Male authors versus female
Some women I know read only female authors and many men read only male authors. What a shame that they limit themselves so! But why? Put simply, men and women…
Texting
Like many others, I bemoan the use of texting, which shortens phrases to their first letters only, or to single letters that stand for a whole word, or to a…
Lazy Language
Most of us have been guilty, perhaps often, of saying something like: "Hopefully, that won't happen." Or "Hopefully, it will happen." Purists insist that starting a sentence with "hopefully" is…