GRAND ALLUSION by James Lincoln Warren Story tellers use all kinds of techniques to achieve economy in story telling, and one of the most advanced is the gentle art of allusion or reference. To the literate reader, a skilled allusion imparts a tremendous amount of information without having to strike the nail on the head. […]

FORENSIC ERRORS by Leigh Lundin If you’ve ever wondered if I buy books mentioned in my column, I do– within the past two weeks, I picked up a dozen mentioned in Criminal Brief plus two forensics books. I was disappointed in both of the latter, so when I saw Doug Lyle had a new forensics […]

STARTING OUT by John M. Floyd At a book signing awhile back, I ran into a friend from a previous life — we were in college together — who said he had only one question for me: “How in the world does someone who worked with computers for 30 years wind up writing fiction for […]

MAGIC AND MYSTERY AND TOURS by Steven Steinbock By the time this column is posted at Criminal Brief, I’ll be across the country in Carmel, California, where I’m doing a speaking gig. As I am typing this, it’s just twelve hours from when my plane takes off, and I still have to finish packing and […]

DROPPING NAMES by Deborah Elliott-Upton In another column I mentioned a short story I was writing which deals with the throes of teenage puberty. My main character was a fourteen-year-old boy named Aidan, the most popular name for boys in 2007. Without exception, every reader didn’t just not identify with my protagonist, no one liked […]

BOOK ‘EM by Robert Lopresti At a music event last month someone asked me to sing one of my songs. Well, that was nice, and thanks for the compliment, but I couldn’t do it. The requester had been present five years ago at one of the only two times I have done performed that song […]

A CUP OF JOE by Melodie Johnson There is an expression that I detest: “Wake up and smell the roses.” I not only hate it for its inane mediocre sentiment, but for its tone. It insists. It demands. It’s not unlike the Nike ad that snapped, “Just do it.” Another version of this command is, […]