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Arts

Is a Good Mystery Hard to Find? Part II: The Lehane Addiction

August 6, 2010

Cover of Shutter Island: A Novel One of our blog readers made an excellent point in response to Part I of this series of blog posts (Thank you Katie!). She stated that most mysteries are more plot-driven than character-driven. This explains why in some mystery novels, the characters seem a little flat. Luckily, I believe [...]

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The New Archetypes: Part 2

August 2, 2010

Image by HaPe_Gera via Flickr Last time I nominated the Rogue Cop for a truly modern archetype.  Dirty Harry of course being the template but we can all get behind a Martin Riggs, your choice of Tango or Cash, or even Lt. Marion ‘Cobra’ Cobretti (even if you don’t want to admit you loved Cobra).  The [...]

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Books That Influence: A Coney Island of the Mind

June 23, 2010

Lawrence Ferlinghetti via last.fm Starting out as a young writer I never wrote stories. Poetry was more my speed. And as a young poet I wrote my share of really, really bad poetry complete with awkward rhymes and sappy subject matter. But somewhere in my junior year of high school I was introduced to a [...]

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Drawing Them In: Advice on Creating Opening Lines

June 7, 2010

Image via WikipediaWhenever I walk into a Barnes and Noble two things happen: 1. I breathe a little easier because being surrounded by books is like therapy for me. 2. After that euphoric experience my senses become immediately overloaded with all the possibilities. Which book should I choose? Do I go with an old reliable [...]

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Cathartic Writing: Where to Turn for Advice on How to Turn Your Personal Demons into Story Gold

April 28, 2010

Cover of On Writing: A Memoir of the CraftWriting comes from a very personal place and many writers agree that the process is an isolated one. Tapping into our own experiences when composing stories can, at times, take us to some pretty dark places. Cathartic writing is a way to unleash pent up emotions while [...]

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