WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? by John M. Floyd I doubt it would come as a revelation to anyone reading this that we who write for this site receive our column ideas at unlikely times, and from unlikely sources. The idea for this one came to me at a bookstore signing a few months ago. […]

APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by Steven Steinbock Sometimes the provenance of a story is as interesting as the story itself. A few weeks back, James Lincoln Warren challenged that the famous Hemingway six-word story was not a story at all. I agreed. But it is possible for a story to be told—replete with action, tension, denouement, […]

IT’S ALIVE! WELL, KIND OF… by Deborah Elliott-Upton A television commercial being shown often depicts what one assumes to be a mad scientist and his assistant who are creating their own credit card. (I will not say they are creating their own monster, but perhaps the ad agency should have thought of the analogy themselves.) […]

WITNESSING I WITNESS by Rob Lopresti Today I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, which I see is available for less than three bucks on the web. Such is fame and glory. I, Witness is a collect of short pieces by mystery writers, but they are not short stories. They are all non-fiction […]

ONE MORE TIME by Melodie Johnson Howe I am now on my sixth, seventh, eighth—I’ve lost count—draft of a short story titled, “A Hollywood Ending.” It’s the ending I’m having trouble with. I’ve been writing long enough to know that the problem is not always where you think it is. In other words, I’m having […]

SECOND RATE THE GREAT by James Lincoln Warren What do you call a restaurant that gets three stars out of four, the term paper that gets a B, the novel that climbs as high as Number 11 on the bestseller list? How do you describe the near miss, how do you characterize the act of […]

SCANDAL SHEETS by Leigh Lundin   The Case of the Purloined Prose   First there was the Cassie Edwards incident. Cassie Edwards, highly regarded romance writer, has sold more than ten million copies of her 100 novels in 25 years. She’s been honored with Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award, the Reviewer’s Choice Award, and named […]