Just last weekend my editor and I came across this house. I expect some of you would cringe when looking at it while others would be packing up their gear waiting for me to mention where it is. The Red Pen saw it as a photo opportunity. I saw it as an object of inspiration. We both saw it as a mystery to be solved. Why? It’s because this house contains something very valuable.
Read MoreMusings
Have Peeps gone too far?
The other day I was waiting in line at Target when a pair of strong hands turned me sideways and pointed something out to me on the endcap of the adjoining aisle. There, sitting in a colorful Easter-wrapped package, were four peeps stabbed through the heart (and out the behind) on a pristine white stick! Oh the inhumanity (more correctly the inpeepwomanity)!
Read More
Ghost Movie Remakes and Sequels
The other day I came across a Facebook post mentioning the 3D remake of Poltergeist. Granted, my first reaction was very similar to my son’s whenTransformers was made into a live-action CG movie, “Are they trying to ruin my childhood?” Being an adult – age wise - I decided to find something good about remaking the movie. There are all the great effects they have at their fingertips now that they didn’t have then. The cast members are great, and I loved what the director, Sam Raimi, did for Spiderman 3, but why are they making it again? Are there no original scripts out there? Hello, I’ve got a lot of ideas…
Read More
Happy Preparation Days
Two very major activities are looming. Both take a lot of hard work and planning. One is the upcoming launch of my thirteenth novel “The Siege,” and the other is preparing for a family Christmas celebration. My diet is forgotten. The stress of edits has me stealing candy canes from the newly decorated tree. As I type this, I have one precariously balanced on my lower lip. Catching my reflection, I see a chain-smoking stereotypical 1940s newspaperman instead of a candy-thieving fiction author.
Read More
Blog on a Friday
Hello! I’m deep into writing the first draft of my next novel of the Haunted Series. So deep that I have been lax on my weekly blog, doing my laundry, nails, hair, shopping, and exercises. Determined not to be one of those authors, I’ve decided to take care of many of my neglected activities, except for my laundry, nails, hair, shopping and exercises.
Read More
Happy Halloween
Happy Halloween! After preparing three pumpkins for carving, I’ve started to call it hollow-it-out-ween and are-you-happy-you-stabbed-yourself-again, duffus-ween. Anyway, here we are again at my favorite time of year. I look forward to seeing frost on the pumpkins, viewing colorful autumnal leaves, and handing out fistfuls of miniature candies to future dental patients and members of Jenny Craig. No healthy food for Halloween or placid toddler-friendly decorations here. In my neck of the woods, the houses are decked out with balls of light, skulls a plenty, a few dozen ghouls clawing their way out of the ground, and the supervising parents walking around with questionable beverages in their hands.
Read More
Rabbit Holes
in Musings
A while ago, I heard someone say this about doing book research, “I got lost down a rabbit hole.” Aside from reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, I never really thought about rabbit holes before. That was until I researched wedding dresses for a certain Steampunk wedding. As I do with most research, I started by googling. Wow. I was surprised by the multitude of choices. Being a visual thinker, I chose to look at images first. “Images” gives you just about anything remotely associated with the words you google.
Read MoreSchool House Mystery
in Musings
Red Pen and I were traveling when we came across these two old school houses. They were, as my mother would say, kitty-corner to each other. Did the community outgrow the first and, instead of adapting it, built another? Both are presently abandoned. The first looks like it had some rehabbing started a few years past, but it too now sat unloved by all but a writer with an imagination. Thoughts of these buildings sat in my subconscious a while until I wrote Something Old. I thought, what if the school houses were haunted by past students? Why would they come back? Did they die there or was it happy memories that pulled them?
Read More