I’ll be back with The Scribbler on Monday, March 7. In the meantime, he-e-e-ere’s Janice! —JLW JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF REALITY by Janice Law My son, who is a professional sportswriter, and I are currently putting together a thriller – the first time I have done any collaborative writing. Since I’ve never even belonged […]

WIKILICKS by Leigh Lundin Today: Plotting, intrigue, war games, crimes, and confusion. If you ever wanted fuel for your hi-tech thriller, take notes. In this intrigue, the so-called good guys do bad things and the so-called bad guys do good. As usual, read ‘allegedly’ before every sentence and all parties are considered innocent until proven […]

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED by John M. Floyd This piece today is about story twists, but not the usual kind. I once heard a speaker at a conference say that reversals in fiction don’t have to be just at the end of a story, and they don’t even have to be restricted to plot reversals. Even […]

SHAGGY DOG STORY by Steven Steinbock Last week I threatened to bore you with some Shabby Dog history. I’ve done some research. You asked for it. Read on. When I was a kid, the older brother of a neighbor kid told a bunch of us a joke. It was a long story about a boy […]

A DEAD LINE by Deborah Elliott-Upton dead•line (noun)      1. time limit          the time by which something must be done or completed.      2. line marked in prison          Formerly, a line in a prison or prison camp marking beyond which prisoners were forbidden to go on pain of death. – Encarta Dictionary: English (North America) I love […]

THEME PARK by Rob Lopresti I’ve been reading a weird and interesting anthology of short stories. Not mysteries, but there is a connection. I have mentioned Ryan North before. He is the creator of Dinosaur Comics, a very strange bit of web-based art. In one strip North’s hero T-Rex proposed an idea for a book: […]

WHAT WOMEN WANT by Melodie Johnson Howe This will be a brief column because I’ve been fighting the flu or the flu has been fighting me. We are at a draw right now. For the last few of days I‘ve been stuck in TV land. If Freud were alive today and could ask his famous […]