VISITING PAT AND REMEMBERING ED by Steven Steinbock As I mentioned in last week’s column, my son and I were traveling through upstate New York looking at colleges. It’s not a good time of year to be travelling to upstate New York. But we managed safely and found the region beautiful. (It was my first […]

HO, HO, HUMBUG by Deborah Elliott-Upton Holiday themed cartoons, movies and sitcoms are rampant this time of year. “Scrooged” starring Bill Murray has been listed on at least one channel every night for a few weeks and last night it was back-to-back on the same channel. Isn’t it time someone wrote a new Christmas-themed story? […]

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK by Rob Lopresti Okay, this week’s rambling has nothing to do with mysteries. However, we have had fun with discussions of interesting titles before (see here and here and here), and I realized I was sitting on a gold mine of them. So it is time to share. As I […]

THE CHRISTMAS PARTY by Melodie Johnson Howe I glanced quickly into the rearview mirror, the paparazzi were speeding close behind us. Except there was only one of them now. Bones pops his head into my office. “Are you ready? Christmas party?” He points to his watch. He doesn’t wear a watch. He’s pointing to where […]

THE KID OF KINDLE by James Lincoln Warren At Bouchercon this year, one of the comments I made concerning the future of short stories was that I thought that the growing phenomenon of downloadable e-publications might represent a windfall for short story authors. Kindles and their cousins are becoming ubiquitous, and the fact that they […]

DAHL 1 for a STORY… by Leigh Lundin I have a rotten cold today. I detest colds and don’t want you to catch one too, so step back from the screen and enjoy Alfred Hitchcock Presents a classic based upon a Roald Dahl story, Lamb to the Slaughter.

BACK TO (AND FROM) THE FUTURE by John M. Floyd I’ve always enjoyed reading traditional fiction. To me, “traditional” means that an interesting character leaves his routine world to face a problem that becomes steadily more complicated until he finds a way to solve it. A simple structure, start to finish: beginning, middle, end. And […]