ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD by Deborah Elliott-Upton Saying goodbye has never been one of my favorite things. Instead, I’d like to say thanks for the opportunity to be a part of your life for these past years at Criminal Brief. This isn’t goodbye as I know we’ll still be bumping into each other again. […]

SHORT, SHORTER, SHORTEST by Deborah Elliott-Upton The shortest story I’ve heard was the famous Hemingway’s six word story. For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. There is speculation as to whether the account of the six word story is true or not. Supposedly, Hemingway bet a table of writers dining at the “famous round table” at […]

A PERFECT CRIME by Deborah Elliott-Upton A detective walks into a practically empty bar and sees a man slumped on the counter. A knife protrudes from his back and blood oozes from the wound. There are two glasses on the bar. One sits in front of the dead man, the other has a lipstick smear […]

PAGES OF TIME by Deborah Elliott-Upton I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. —“Trees” by Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918 It seems everywhere I turn, people are having their trees loped off at ground level. Judging by their size, these are trees that have been thriving for a minimum of thirty […]

WORDS WITH AN ACCENT by Deborah Elliott-Upton A commercial for a cable company promises via a friendly-looking female, “I speak with a local accent.” To me, that says this company is not outsourcing their call centers and I can expect to speak to someone who understands my own accent. I am told I do have […]

Our lovely and talented Femme Fatale is not feeling as well as she ought this week, and asked me to choose one of her former columns to run this week until she’s back on her feet. I’ve chosen this one from last year (August 19) because it’s one of my favorites and demonstrates how her […]

EASY READING by Deborah Elliott-Upton Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne is best known to most high school students as the author of The Scarlet Letter—probably with a vision of Demi Moore (from the movie version) rather than the writer who created her character, the adulteress, Hester Prynne. That’s probably how […]