I learned about Jane Haddam’s death in the way I’d guess she’d want her readers to learn about it: while reading her last book, One Of Our Own. Her sons added an afterward to let her fans know what had happened. I was sad for the rest of the day. Haddam, aka Orania Papazoglu, was […]
It’s been a year now since the pandemic descended upon us. As a retired person, I was in the enviable position of being able to go into lockdown without too much trouble. I live in a state where most people are decent about observing public safety rules and, although I suffer from cabin fever as […]
Most romances are written in third person. It’s not a requirement, mind you. There are first person romances, some of them classics (Jane Eyre springs to mind). But using third person allows you to use multiple points of view, switching back and forth between hero and heroine, for example, with the villain thrown in sometimes […]
A few years ago, Entertainment Weekly hit a new level on the hubris meter: they listed the 100 best in a variety of entertainment categories, movies, television, plays, music, and books (and therein lies another blog post). Predictably, I disagree with a lot of their choices, but I’m sure I’m not the only one. Everybody […]
The woman in line ahead of me at the grocery store was talking to the clerk. “It’s not a real holiday,” she said. “It’s all about marketing.” “Oh, I know,” the clerk said. “My husband and I never give each other anything.” “And the cards,” the customer said. “They’re ridiculous. And so expensive.” “I agree,” […]
Billionaires are in. If you go to Amazon and search for “billionaire” and “romance,” you’ll find a hundred pages of titles. Fifty Shades of Grey is probably the most prominent of these books, but there are lots of others, and the trend has been around for years. I remember reading Christina Dodd’s Just the Way […]
You see this meme repeatedly on Facebook—a Venn diagram showing the small intersection between what the author meant and what the English teacher thinks the author meant. Usually it’s posted by an author who’s convinced that English teachers are evil witches distorting an author’s true meaning. English teachers, say the authors, should just stick to […]
I’m on record as not liking some kinds of alpha heroes: heroes whose main qualifications are big muscles, membership in some elite military group and thinly disguised misogyny just don’t do it for me. But I think a lot depends on how alphas are defined. And I recently had a chance to take a look […]
All of my Konigsburg books include animals. I’m not sure how this happened, it just did. Starting with a diabolic cat and a sweet-natured Chihuahua in Venus In Blue Jeans, I had a greyhound in Wedding Bell Blues, a mostly coon hound puppy in Be My Baby, and a largely Maine coon cat in Long […]
If I were given a choice between writing a synopsis and writing a blurb (and believe me, that’s a horrible choice), I’d go with the synopsis. Synopses are basically summaries, and most of us have some experience with summarizing. You’ve got three or four pages for the whole thing, and your main job is to […]
