TRUE CRIME IS MESSY by Robert Lopresti Last week I wrote about a theft that our library experienced. This week, if you can stand a little more, I’m going to write about some of the reactions to the experience. Let’s start with the obvious. The classic phrase about being robbed is “I feel violated.” Yeah, […]

FACES by Melodie Johnson Howe I went to the Santa Barbara Museum of History Sunday to see the Edward S. Curtis photographs of American Indians. What was extraordinary about this exhibit was not only the intimate portraits of the Indian men, but the portraits of the women. It was the first time I realized that […]

LA VIE EN ROBE by James Lincoln Warren The other night I selected a CD at random from my boxed set of Édith Piaf recordings and played it on the stereo. I love French cabaret music, and after Belgian chanteur Jacques Brel, Piaf is my favorite — she sang utterly without inhibition, declaiming her broken […]

AMAZON MUSCLE by Leigh Lundin Susan Slater Author Susan Slater has written a raft of books, including at least two mystery series I’m aware of, the Ben Pecos and the Dan Mahoney mysteries. Her web site is well worth viewing for another reason, because it is one of the rare good uses of Shockwave Flash […]

FANTASYLAND by John M. Floyd Who said fiction writers are strange? Well, it doesn’t matter — whoever said it was probably right. To paraphrase Lawrence Block (I really like Lawrence Block), anyone who spends most of his or her waking hours in the company of imaginary people — people that he or she invented — […]

MAGIC AND MYSTERY by Steve Steinbock Last week I mentioned an article in the March 17 New Yorker magazine. It was a long piece by Adam Gopnik titled “The Real Work: Modern Magic and the Meaning of Life” exploring the thinking that goes on behind performance magic. Sleight-of-hand is a hobby of mine. I love […]

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW by Deborah Elliott-Upton I’ve been asked: When do writers stop attending writer’s workshops? My answer: When the writer becomes a know-it-all. Okay, I am sure there are many writers who no longer attend writer’s conferences as an attendee, nor do they necessarily need to do so. This is probably a personal […]