To my friends and family in Louisiana, I’m thinking of you and praying for you. I hope Hurricane Delta didn’t deal you a whole lot of misery. Yesterday, continuing with my yard cleaning, I journeyed to the front yard. While under the oak tree, picking up limbs and twigs, something hit me on the head. […]
Oct 9, 2020
Therapeutic Snipping
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My back yard looks a whole lot neater. Yesterday, I wheeled my trusty wheelbarrow into position, took the snippers and started clipping and picking up and stacking. Dead wood, odd bits of tree limbs, a rose trellis that had seen better days, it all went into the wheelbarrow. Now, to get it to the curb […]
Aug 19, 2020
The Menace in the Middle
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Do the first lines of a new book tell you whether you want to read the whole thing? First lines are important. So are final lines, but how about the middle? The middle of a mystery is important too. These are middle lines from my seven cozy mysteries. Can you identify the book each is […]
Aug 18, 2020
Stop While You’re Ahead
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Stop while you’re ahead. I used to hear this phrase a lot; not so much nowadays. It means to cut it out, stop doing or saying whatever. It’s useful in a lot of circumstances, but certainly in speaking or writing. One of the hardest things a writer has to do is delete those unnecessary words […]
Jun 22, 2020
Murder By Moonlight
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I did it! Finished Murder By Moonlight, the fourth Ned McNeil cozy mystery. That is to say, I’ve gotten to the end of the book. Now begins the arduous task of editing, editing, editing. It’ll be a while. Writing Murder By Moonlight was such fun. It’s a little different, in that the book centers around […]
May 27, 2020
A Brand New Day
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It was a good way to start a brand new day. I opened the blinds onto the deck this morning, and there was a bright red cardinal. He cocked his head, hopped over to a chair, then onto a deck railing, all the while gazing at me. Did he want to tell me something? He […]
