Mystery of a Shrinking Violet

It’s Saturday, and a Blue Moon. To celebrate, here’s another quiz for your enjoyment, compliments of Quizilla.

What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
brought to you by Quizilla

Lord of the Rings!

On a favorite mystery list, someone asked, in relation to a discussion of The Da Vinci Code: What limits believability for you in a story?

For me the line isn’t drawn so much at facts as consistency. The author needs to follow the rules he’s set up for his story. I also have a tough time with author cheating, not providing the information that’s needed, trying to trick the reader by holding something back. If I sense the author is holding out on me, I’ll stop reading.

Facts that I know to be different from how they’re presented do bother me. I suppose it’s a matter of degree that determines whether they ruin the story’s believability for me. I recall reading a book by a well known mystery author in which she got some details about an illness wrong. I’m not a medical professional, but I nevertheless knew she was wrong. Still I was able to read through it and enjoy the story. If it had been a more obvious error or had affected the story or its outcome in an unbelievable way, I doubt I would’ve been so forgiving.

We all make mistakes. I’m probably most unforgiving of my own (more…)

We have no children, and we rarely eat at the same hour from one day to the next, so cooking is often a last minute decision in our house. The other day in Costco I had apples on the list, so we found our favorite Fuji apples. Then we saw berries. Strawberries, blueberries, big containers of them, wafting their divine aroma into our path. (more…)

Robert Langdon is an American teacher and writer, an expert in symbolism and art. While visiting France to speak before The American University of Paris, he’s wakened in his hotel room late at night and summoned to the Louvre Museum by the French Judicial Police. The museum’s esteemed curator, Jacques Saunière, has been murdered in the Grand Gallery, where many of the Louvre’s masterpieces reside, particularly the Mona Lisa. (more…)

I live in Southern California, with my husband, in a house that is way too small for us, our pets and our hobbies. One problem with the size of this house is it doesn’t hold enough books. For us, books are a priority. All kinds. First edition hardbacks, mass market paperbacks, novels, anthologies, self-help, and professional texts. There are never quite enough shelves to hold them, so they spill over into places they don’t belong. I keep a pair of binoculars (more…)

That’s the headline of a July 18, 2004 New York Times article by Laura Miller, of interest to those of us who’d like to be traditionally published.

The article offers statistics from R. R. Bowker on numbers of books published per year, as well as comments from editors, many of whom chose not to be named. One of the authors quoted in the article is M. J. Rose, who’s a member of my favorite mystery listserv.

Aside from some depressing numbers, indicating that the supply of published fiction has out-stripped demand, what disturbed me most (more…)

What color are you? (Amazingly detailed & accurate-with pics!)
brought to you by Quizilla

I thought I would be violet , but . . .

I am green: (more…)

With A Bit On Writers’ Critique Groups

I once advised someone on a writing list, who posed a question about a particular writing problem, that they should write ten or so different paragraphs as practice. The person expressed a reluctance to do so. This amazed me, that the writer wasn’t willing to practice. (more…)

The rough draft is done!

It’s so rough I’ll probably need a Jeep to make my way back through it. I began writing this latest mystery on 4/29/2004 and finished the first draft on 7/4/2004 at some 100,000 words.