“Least said, soonest mended” is an idiom I think of a lot. It’s useful in many situations. Something is more easily forgotten if it’s not mentioned; feelings are less apt to be hurt if thoughts are kept to oneself; words once spoken can’t be taken back; angry words left unspoken don’t have to be forgiven. […]
Sep 2, 2020
Spoken Thoughts
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It’s such an extraordinary thing to hear my own thoughts spoken aloud by someone else! How’d that happen, you may ask? It’s all because of audible books. I love them. My publisher is having the Ned McNeil books put into audible form. All of the four Darcy and Flora books are already available as audibles. […]
Aug 29, 2020
Gardyloo and That Means You!
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Words are like people–they have interesting backgrounds. One such word is gardyloo. It originated in France, but was used in other countries too, as a warning that something unsavory was about to happen. What, you may ask? Suppose that you were walking along the street of a European town in the year 1650. Suddenly, from […]
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 […]
Apr 30, 2020
What Word is in Your Mouth?
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Politicians often get into trouble for their choice of words and try “walking them back.” How do you do that? Many times, I’ve wished I could “walk a word back” but once it’s spoken, I sure don’t know any way to get it unspoken. The best I could do was apologize for what I […]
Apr 23, 2020
The Birthday of a Master
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For goodness sake, it is not a foregone conclusion that all is doom and gloom. I refuse to budge an inch from my belief that all will be well. All the phrases in italics are attributed to William Shakespeare, that great master of words, who was born on this day in 1564 and died on this day […]
