GOING RETRO by Deborah Elliott-Upton Yesterday I found myself an hour away from home in a quaint, small town complete with a main street library that looked like it once may have been a barbecue restaurant with dark-stained wood siding on the exterior. I stepped inside hoping to research a new idea for a novel […]

BEAUTIFUL DAY by Rob Lopresti Walked into the kitchen and stepped in something one of the cats had apparently coughed up last night. No problem. There’s lots more socks where that one came from. Opened the fridge. No yogurt left for breakfast. Okay, toast will be a nice change. I look out the window at […]

MACMELODIE by Melodie Johnson Howe My computer did what computers always end up doing. It threw a tizzy. Like a mean spirited soothsayer, it began to say that terrible things were going to happen to me if I didn’t escape. Then one day it freezes up. Like a child throwing a tantrum, it just stopped […]

THE MICE TRAP by James Lincoln Warren Deborah’s column last week gave us a list of reasons, at least according to an evangelical religious sect, why good people do bad things. Along with the title of Hamlet’s play-within-a-play alluded to last week in this space, that reminded me of a famous acronym used by the […]

The iPAD by Leigh Lundin Before friends Sharon and Steve flew off to California, Sharon begged me to set up her new iPad, akin to asking a teenage garage mechanic if he’d mind test driving your new Lamborghini. I sighed mightily and allowed that after my many other duties, I might reluctantly glance at it. […]

TICKET, PLEASE by John M. Floyd For today’s column I went to a familiar subject, in mystery/suspense fiction: stories that involve trains. I’ve always liked them, because they give the reader or viewer an isolated, “closed” setting—sort of like a locked-room mystery, at times. After all, when the train’s moving no one’s going to get […]

WHERE THEY WORK by Steven Steinbock Steven Steinbock and Evan Hunter (Ed McBain) I wandered over to see my friends at Murdurati and was intrigued to learn that they’re doing a theme fortnight (they’re calling it theme week(s), but I can be cleverer than that. Besides, how often do I have a chance to use […]