PROFESSIONAL TIPS – George Orwell by Leigh Lundin In recent weeks, Criminal Brief shared tips from three authors, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Jack Kerouac, and Elmore Leonard. This week we feature tips from another noted author and essayist, Eric Arthur Blair, literature’s George Orwell. Orwell’s novels are straightforward and readily understood by middle schoolers, although a […]

WHAT’S THE BIG HURRY? by John M. Floyd I once saw a skit that poked fun at the talent-competition part of televised beauty pageants. It featured a young lady who marched onstage and announced that her talent was “speed reading.” She spent the next minute or so staring with fierce concentration at the book in […]

BLOG-BLOCKED by Steve Steinbock Maybe it was reading Melodie’s “Swan Song” column. Maybe it’s lack of caffeine. Maybe it’s hay fever or spring fever or the sudden heat wave that hit Maine on Thursday. I have a list of interesting topics on which to base columns. But I can’t seem to settle on any of […]

Regular Criminal Brief commentator alisa dollar says of herself: Published in Range Riter Anthology; Daily Devotions for Writers; weekly “slice-of-life” article in the Frankston Citizen News; and an online sci-fi anthology. Day job – Assistant to the Director of Water Resources Center at Texas Tech University. Married 41 years to the only man who willingly […]

THE BAG MAN by Rob Lopresti Look over there. No, not yet. Okay, now. See that guy? See what he’s carrying? Yeah, a plastic bag, the kind with a sealing top. But he doesn’t have his lunch in it. It’s a magazine. Why is he carrying a magazine around in a sealable plastic bag? Maybe […]

SWAN SONG by Melodie Johnson Howe The Long Goodbye The Goodbye Look Goodbye, Columbus The Goodbye Kiss Farewell, My Lovely Goodbye, Mr. Motto Swan Song The Long Divorce Goodnight and Goodbye Goodbye, Mr. Thorndike Good Night, Sheriff Goodbye, Mr. Chips A Farwell to Arms Always Say Goodbye I could go on. But I’m not. This […]

RHETORICAL QUESTION by James Lincoln Warren As I promised I would do eventually, here’s my take on the third of the subjects covered by the “Trivium” of the medieval classical education: Rhetoric. (The first two subjects were Logic and Grammar.) Of the three, Rhetoric is the most misunderstood. The OED defines rhetoric as “The art […]