FEBRUARY FILL DIKE1 by James Lincoln Warren One of things I enjoy most when writing a story is coming up with names for my characters, and occasionally even names for my locales—there is no place I’m aware of in Devonshire called Warcoombe, for example, the site of one of my stories, but I loved the […]

THEORETICALLY SPEAKING by James Lincoln Warren I think that most writers learn their craft through reverse engineering: you take a story you like, figure out how its different ingredients make it tick, and try to construct something along the same lines. A well-known example of this is Mary Higgins Clark’s claim that she learned how […]

IN THE MOOD Part the Second by James Lincoln Warren Two weeks ago, I wrote about grammatical moods and its three flavors, indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. The indicative and imperative moods are semantically pretty straightforward, but the subjunctive is fraught with subtlety and peril. The Gentle Reader may recall that the subjunctive mood is used […]

PRONZINI PRESENTS by James Lincoln Warren I had intended to run Part II of my diatribe on the use of grammatical mood today, but after having read John’s review of Bill Pronzini’s Small Felonies with its attendant mention of my personal story about Bill, I thought it would be timely to share the tale with […]

IN THE MOOD Part the First by James Lincoln Warren I’m not in a bad mood. But when I worked for Barnes & Noble, the manager used to drive me around the bend when she would speak thus: CUSTOMER: Where is the cookbook section? MANAGER: That would be on the second floor, to the left […]

ANNOUNCING OUR CHRISTMAS CONTEST WINNERS SPOILER ALERT: One of the descriptions below of the solutions submitted by the winners contains the answer to the puzzle. If you are following Leigh’s columns for this and next week describing the evolution of the puzzle and how it can be solved, and do not want to know the […]

GETTING A CLUE by James Lincoln Warren Last week, we ran a series of columns, each with a hidden clue that gives a Christmas message. The opportunity to enter the contest actually started yesterday when the Entry Form was posted on the website. The prizes, as we indicated, are copies of a slender volume of […]