CAN I JUST SAY NO TO THE SYNOPSIS? by Deborah Elliott-Upton I know one writer who swears she enjoys writing the synopsis for a novel. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s written so many of them herself, read so many as an editor, or if she’s just so talented that it comes easier to […]

A DEAD LINE by Deborah Elliott-Upton dead•line (noun)      1. time limit          the time by which something must be done or completed.      2. line marked in prison          Formerly, a line in a prison or prison camp marking beyond which prisoners were forbidden to go on pain of death. – Encarta Dictionary: English (North America) I love […]

WHY? WHY? WHY? by Deborah Elliott-Upton This week I have nothing but questions. While I ponder them and find a few answers for myself, I pose a series of those that I have been asked concerning writing. Why should we still be reading old-fashioned books when technology is throwing entertainment at us faster than we […]

MYSTERIOUS EVENTS IN LIFE AND DEATH by Deborah Elliott-Upton This past week, three people in my family passed away: My father-in-law, who was perhaps one of the sweetest, most non-judgmental men I’ve known, my mother’s aunt (the last living relative older than Mom in her family tree), and my father’s uncle, who lived to be […]

MOTIVES by Deborah Elliott-Upton For a mystery writer, one of the basic elements of the story is why the crime takes place at all. What drives someone to do some dastardly deed that may lead at best to a stint in a jail cell? What is worth taking someone’s life, cash, or car? Why does […]

LET YOUR CONSCIENCE BE YOUR GUIDE? by Deborah Elliott-Upton “There is no witness so terrible, no accuser so potent, as the conscience that dwells in every man’s breast.” —Polybius Recently, I stumbled upon the 1928 movie version of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the earliest acknowledged adaptation to film of Edgar Allen Poe’s classic story of a […]

GOING SOMEWHERE ELSE by Deborah Elliott-Upton Weather temperatures have dive-bombed beyond reasonably chilly and catapulted past a postcard prettiness and onto the bitter part of winter—and this is only the beginning of the season. I type slower when my fingers are freezing. Yet when the brain starts churning out ideas, my fingers flies across the […]