READING SAM CLEMENS by Steven Steinbock At the beginning of summer Sam, my youngest son, was very happy to put all his schoolwork aside. He also declared, after finishing Lawrence Block’s The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, that he was finished reading until school started up again in the fall. “What’s the matter? You […]

I WRITE LIKE. . . by Steven Steinbock A few weeks back – I forget how or where – I learned about a website that incorporates an analytic algorithm to compare a sample of writing to a database of writing styles by famous authors. The website, called I Write Like, was developed by Dmitry Chestnykh, […]

WHERE AND WHEN by Steven Steinbock It wasn’t until the late 1700s that science began to reconcile that space and time were the same stuff. “Stuff,” incidentally, isn’t a scientific term; nor, as a noun, is it a very helpful literary term. But sometimes no other English word will do. Twenty-three hundred years ago, Euclid […]

KILL YOUR DARLINGS by Steven Steinbock

TURNING OVER OLD LEAVES by Steven Steinbock I’ve been looking through some of my old issues of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM). Periodically over the next weeks or months I’ll take a close look at some of these and use this space to share with you what I find. This week I’m looking at the […]

SOLEMN VOWS? by Steven Steinbock Elaine Viets revealed a new side of herself to me this week. Anyone who knows Elaine knows that she’s wonderfully nuts. Her “Dead-End Jobs” series is a good indication of it. In order to do the research for every dead-end job her heroine Helen Hawthorn has taken, Elaine has tried […]

STEAMING HOT WORDS by Steven Steinbock This morning I jumpstarted my brain with a cup of coffee and a crossword puzzle. I finished the puzzle except for two intersecting words. One of the troublesome clues was Ace (slang). All I could think of were playing cards, WWI pilots, and news reporters, but I couldn’t fit […]