THINK SLINK by Rob Lopresti Not long after the Oscars Awards I heard someone refer to a woman’s outfit as slinky. That got me thinking about that word: what exactly does it mean, anyway? I went to my favorite source for such information: the Oxford English Dictionary, where the word is listed as a proper […]

KING AND THIEF by Rob Lopresti Hello, my name is Rob and I’m a thief. I steal story ideas. A lot. Okay, they’re all legitimate theft. If it were plagiarism I wouldn’t brag about it. Here is a list of people I stole story ideas from. Keep in mind, these are just from my published […]

DEPARTMENT OF ODD SOCKS – VII by Rob Lopresti Last year was a bad one for the police in western Washington state, where I live. Six officers or deputies were killed in three incidents in just over two months. The Seattle Times recently had a very interesting article in their Sunday magazine about the first […]

FIRST IMPRESSION by Rob Lopresti Steve D. Rogers did a wonderful job last week analyzing the opening of one of his short stories and that reminded me that I had been thinking about doing a similar job on a short story I read recently. So, here goes. Sam Geddes placed the faded “Clerk Wanted, Inquire […]

PROLOGUE FOR A SHANKS NOVEL in case I ever write one by Rob Lopresti

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN by Rob Lopresti “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” —Mark Twain The photo above shows your humble scribe celebrating one of the perks of his status as a faculty member at a university, namely the privilege of helping our new graduates solemnize their achievement. […]

DICK FRANCIS by Rob Lopresti Some random thoughts on the passing of Dick Francis . . . I refused to read him for many years, thinking: why would I want to read mysteries about sports? And worse, by an athlete? How good can that be? Well, very good, in fact. And it is quite clear […]