BANDERSNATCHES by Steve Steinbock Caveat I wanted to write a post-script to this week’s Bandersnatch, but the trouble with post-scripts is that people usually don’t read them until after they’ve read everything else, if they read them at all. After writing this week’s Bandersnatch, I read Rob’s Tune It or Die column of this week. […]

I LOVE TO WRITE by Deborah Elliott-Upton On my desk sits the 2007 Bylines Writers Calendar where I am featured during the week of`September 16-22. The new calendar for 2008 will be soon available, but unfortunately, I missed the deadline for submissions to be considered. The thing is, this calendar has been beneficial in more […]

ADULT CONTENT AND DISCONTENT by Robert Lopresti Last month I updated my anti-virus software and, in a fit of Buyer’s Glee, I managed to turn on all the features, including parental controls. No one in my house is under eighteen. In fact. everyone in my house has been married longer than that. So I didn’t […]

MORE MELODIE MUSINGS by Melodie Johnson Howe Norman Mailer died. I have a love hate relationship with him just as I do with Doris Lessing. In fact I’m beginning to really detest Lessing after I read this quote from her in a James Carroll column in the Boston Globe. “… the 911 attacks were ‘not […]

TALESPINNING V. WORDSMITHY by James Lincoln Warren Saturday evening, I attended a cocktail party given jointly by the Mystery Writers of America Southern California Chapter and Sisters in Crime Los Angeles Chapter. At one point during the evening, I approached a friend, Thomas B. Sawyer, best known as the showrunner for “Murder, She Wrote” some […]

REMEMBRANCER by Leigh Lundin “Into the vat of water boiling with lye, he heaved the body…” This week, I’ve been working on a story set in central Indiana and I’ll risk repeating personal background I’ve touched upon before. In Shelby County, I grew up on the last of the farms which had been in the […]

DEAR READERS, With great regret, I must confirm that the cliché “biology is destiny” actually contains some truth. Doctors insist I stop doing a select list of physical chores—including writing. Spines need disks, and several of mine seem to have forgotten their purpose. Thus, after some struggles to resist, I unhappily withdraw from the Criminal […]