EXPERIMENTAL MICE by James Lincoln Warren Last week I wrote about how outside circumstances may yield a result in which The best-laid plans o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain For promised joy. (As Robbie Burns so eloquently put it.) And this directed my thoughts to how […]

WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG … by James Lincoln Warren … to bring you this Special Bulletin. Central Florida has had a massive power outage. Normally, we here at Criminal Brief wouldn’t bother our readers with Breaking News, but in this case, it has broken any possibility for Leigh to post his weekly column. […]

DEATH-LINE by James Lincoln Warren There is nothing in the world that inspires an author as powerfully as a deadline, except for a paycheck. Although CB has a deadline for each of the contributors, I don’t usually find it all that particularly hard to meet since all it really requires is a relatively short rant. […]

INFORMATION, PLEASE by James Lincoln Warren It’s been a while since I stood on my educational soapbox, so here’s a fine diatribe to start your week off with on the subject. The other day, a young man of my acquaintance trying to make a name for himself as a producer in the film industry asked […]

EDITOR! EDITOR! by James Lincoln Warren There are basically three kinds of criticism for fiction: literary criticism scholastically examines fiction as an artefact in an aesthetic or cultural context; reviews are popular criticism, supposed to provide a thumbnail sketch of a work with the object of letting the reader decide whether it is worth his […]

COMMENCEMENT EXERCISE — CONCLUSION by James Lincoln Warren Last week, I challenged the Gentle Reader to manipulate a piece of short fiction, “Simon’s Secret”, in such a way as to open the story according to a number of listed techniques. Alas, not one reader responded, so in today’s concluding article, I’m afraid all of the […]

COMMENCEMENT EXERCISE by James Lincoln Warren In response to Rob’s query, “What comes after the title?”, Our Correspondent Gary very sensibly requests, “I’d like to see some comments on where to start the story.” Where does one start the narrative? Luckily, people have been telling stories for thousands of years and have built up a […]