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Cool stuff I’ve read, fiction writing edition: Dana Stabenow on writing crime fiction, Janice Hardy on stage directions, and a handy scene checklist from Fiction Notes
Today I’m kicking off what I hope will become a regular feature around these parts: cool stuff I’ve read. Today’s edition covers blog posts about the craft of writing, but I hope to share non-writing things too: stories, podcasts, weird news, interesting science–whatever crosses my desk that would in normal times make me get out of my office chair, barge into your workspace unannounced, and say, “You have to read this.” So what cool stuff have I read lately? Glad you asked. 7 Tips for Writing Crime Fiction – Dana Stabenow Dana Stabenow, famous for her crime novels set in Alaska, gives us fellow crime writers a useful and occasionally…
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#CBWC: Wispy water
This week’s entry for Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge was taken on a rainy Black Friday in 2007. I’d always wanted to learn how to get this ribbony effect when taking pictures of running water, so I decided to teach myself. This picture is one of my earliest attempts.
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Writing as risky business–or how to offend everyone (#IWSG)
I participate in the monthly IWSG (Insecure Writers Support Group) blog hop. This month’s optional question is: Are you a risk-taker when writing? Do you try something radically different in style/POV/etc. or add controversial topics to your work? When people make lists of the riskiest professions, those lists include jobs like mining and commercial fishing, not writing. But writing carries its own, albeit less deadly and/or smelly, risks. The most common one is poverty, because writing pays crap, but I’m not going to talk about that today. My day job keeps me in Pop Tarts and Extra Toasty Cheez-Its, so I shouldn’t complain. The IWSG question of the month mentions…
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#FOTD: Lemon blossoms in our Tucson backyard
My mother always cooked with lemons. We had a lemon tree in our backyard when I was growing up in Northern California, and it produced lemons by the bushel basket. She even left a huge bag of lemons on the front seat of my car when I was in college, so my dorm-mates and I could make fresh lemonade. That activity was a wholesome departure from our usual shenanigans. The house we bought here in Tucson came with a sad, neglected lemon tree. We’ve been pampering it since we moved in–giving it lots of water, mulching it with compost, and, in my case, whispering sweet nothings to it as though…
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#FOTD: Trillium from my Portland garden
For Cee’s Flower of the Day photo challenge, another throwback to my Portland gardening days. Taken April 7, 2007. I posted another trillium picture back in January, when I was looking over memories of times and gardens past. We don’t have trilliums here in Tucson–trilliums don’t have spines or thorns, and I believe it’s a local ordinance that anything grown here must be able to stab you. I don’t miss the rainy Portland winters, but I do–occasionally–miss slogging through my garden between showers to see if the trilliums were blooming yet. After months of grey and rain, I’d cling to any sign of spring the way an aphid clings to…
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#FOTD: African daisies
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#CWBC: Pair of barrel cacti
This week’s theme for Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge (CWBC) is Pairs. We found this pair of barrel cacti in the East unit of Saguaro National Park, about a half hour from where I live. Since moving to Tucson last October, I’ve found myself falling in love with cacti. They are fascinating, and I’m in awe of their ability to survive in such unforgiving conditions.
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Fiction writers, make your action beats multitask
“This deserted warehouse sure is creepy,” Shaggy said. “Yeah, it is. Now let’s split up and see if we can find the Ghostly Fisherman,” Fred said. “Ruh roh,” Scooby said. [several adventures later, usually involving Shaggy and Scooby running for their lives] “Let’s see who’s been scaring all the tourists away from Devil’s Cove,” Fred said. He yanked the mask off the Ghostly Fisherman. “It’s Barney Rumblefish, the real estate mogul,” Fred said. “I was trying to scare everyone away, so I could buy out old man Farnsworth for cheap and build a new luxury hotel in Devil’s Cove,” Rumblefish said. “And I would have gotten away with it if…
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Better Babies Contests: Eugenics at the State Fair
I’ve written before about what we writers call research, and everyone else calls farting around on the internet. Today I’ll share an example from earlier this week of where farting around on the internet research led me. Warning: disturbing content ahead. I’m polishing up my time travel romance, Vanishing, Inc., to get ready to query agents, and I wanted to add a funny date scene set in a traveling carnival. A little Googling, a few clicks, and I found myself browsing through an Arizona State Fair program from 1916. Pictures of the fair commissioners, rules for livestock judging, who was in charge of harness racing that year… and then I…
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Not getting email updates? Please resubscribe
Back in January, I announced my new pen name and gave this blog a new look. Behind the scenes, I also moved it to a new host so I could have more control over how it looked and behaved. But, of course, there was a problem. There’s always a problem when technology is involved. Always. It turns out that when you migrate a WordPress site from wordpress.com to wordpress.org, people who follow your blog via email no longer get emails. Yeah, I know, kinda defeats the purpose of following via email, right? I’m guessing I had quite a few email followers, because when I migrated my site, my hit counts…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
