WHAT’S THAT BOY SAYIN’? by John M. Floyd It’s easy sometimes to tell whether someone is from the South. And no, it has nothing to do with pickup trucks or chitlins or RC Colas. I’m talking about speech. Some of the tipoffs are obvious. When a guy tells you he tikes a brike beside the […]

INSPECT YOUR GADGETS by John M. Floyd Here’s a piece of advice we’re often given, as writers: to succeed in fiction, what you write must be different. If you want a readership—or even if you just want to get one story published—you’d better come up with something more than the same-old same-old. On the other […]

MOVIE TALK by John M. Floyd My name’s Friday. I carry a badge. Just kidding. Actually my name’s Floyd and I carry a cell phone. But I’ve always found it interesting that lines of dialogue from movies and TV can work their way into our language, and as a writer I’ve found that observing fictional […]

INFORMAL IS NORMAL by John M. Floyd Years ago, when I began my career with IBM Corporation, one of the jokes going around was that we didn’t really need mirrors in the building. If employees needed to check their appearance, they just walked up to someone else, stood there face-to-face, straightened their ties or whatever, […]

GREAT EXPECTATIONS? by John M. Floyd The other day I received two Netflix envelopes on the same day. It’s always fun when that happens; the only thing better is when I receive three. Anyhow, these were two crime/suspense movies, In Bruges and Dolan’s Cadillac, and I was looking forward to them both — the first […]

BIO MECHANICS by John M. Floyd Easy question: when is talking about yourself not fun? Answer: when you’re writing a bio. What’s a bio? That’s easy too: if you’re an author, it’s a brief summary of you, your background, and your writing credits. It might include a list of previous publications and awards, and (occasionally) […]

SHORT AND SOUTHERN by John M. Floyd No, I’m not talking about me; I can be described by only one of those adjectives. I’m referring to Ford County, the recent collection of short stories by John Grisham. They’re not crime fiction (although a crime is mentioned in each of the seven stories) and they’re actually […]