TAKE A SEAT by Deborah Elliott-Upton In my “Writing & Marketing the Short Story” classes at the local college, I could tell who would be the best writers from the moment they chose a seat. At first, I thought it was a fluke when the students who would write the most interesting stories chose to […]

A BLOGGER’S PLEDGE by Robert Lopresti Starters Welcome to my timeshare of this experiment in short mystery blogging. I am the author of thirty-plus short stories, mostly mysteries, and a novel. Tune It Or Die refers to the fact that I am also a singer-songwriter and a struggler with the many-stringed monster called the autoharp. […]

ON YOGA AND MURDER by Melodie Johnson Howe It’s difficult to do Yoga and plan a murder at the same time. Along with my three classmates I’m in Tree pose. We are in a light-filed home studio situated on a ridge in Santa Barbara overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Channel Islands. It is a […]

INTRODUCING CRIMINAL BRIEF by James Lincoln Warren Edgar Allan Poe’s first published work of fiction was a short story, “Murders in the Rue Morgue”. With it, he invented the mystery genre. Edgar Allan Poe never finished a novel. Arthur Conan Doyle’s first published work of fiction was a serialized novel, A Study in Scarlet. With […]