PAGES of STORIES, Part I Weekend Giveaway by John M. Floyd with Leigh Lundin Last May, James wrote an article about a new short story publication called Pages of Stories. Yesterday they achieved their first anniversary, which is good news for any startup, but especially in this tight economy. This publication will interest readers for […]

CONTINUITY by Steven Steinbock Continuity (noun) con·ti·nu·i·ty. 1. logical sequence, cohesion, or connection; 2. a continuous or connected whole; 3. an uninterrupted succession or flow; a coherent whole. Last week I was reading selections from volume one of The Grand Game: A Celebration of Sherlockian Scholarship (available from The Baker Street Irregulars). It’s a fantastic […]

APRIL BABY SHOWERS by Deborah Elliott-Upton Just for fun I decided to see if there was a writer born today, on April 14th. Sure enough, Arnold Joseph Toynbee was born on this date in 1889. He was a British historian who authored A Study of History, “a 12 volume analysis of the rise and fall […]

SEPARATED AT BIRTH by Rob Lopresti So, it’s your first day at the studio as a casting director. Congratulations! The Producer’s secretary invites you into the great man’s office. He smiles vaguely at you, waiting for the secretary to whisper in his ear some hint of who you are and why he has sent for […]

THE X FILES by Melodie Johnson Howe I have files and files of ideas for short stories on my computer. I knew I should organize them, say, like my closet. So I decided to sit down and go through them and clean out what I don’t need and keep what I do. I discovered there […]

OUR AMERICAN GODFATHER by Janice Law Edgar Allan Poe helped father not one, but two, types of mystery story. The line featuring puzzles and a super rational detective comes via works like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” with the redoubtable C. Auguste Dupin. Dupin, like the later Sherlock Holmes, comes […]

SAILING CLOSE to the WIND by Leigh Lundin It’s been a while since we last looked in on our friend, Travis Erwin. He shared with Criminal Brief a story of trials, travails, and tribulations. It’s not that Travis isn’t a good story-teller; he is. But he does something few males dare try– he writes romance under […]