Deadpan Originality Portis, Charles (1999). The Dog of the South. New York: The Overlook Press (256 pp). I enjoyed the utter originality of Portis’ sentences. How does anybody spin out such interesting details that do not have the stink of … Continue reading
A Wisp of a Tale Doerr, Anthony (2014). All the Light We Cannot See. New York: Scribner (530 pp). This novel is is composed of dozens upon dozens of short, one-to-five-page chapters of very digestible, easy to absorb, pleasantly written … Continue reading
A book without readers still has value. The process of writing it was a journey. New vistas were opened, discoveries made, surprises encountered, lessons learned. It’s better if the book has readers, though. Long ago I decided to focus on … Continue reading
I wrote a story, something I haven’t done in a year. It’s for a contest associated with a conference I’ll attend this summer. Conference attendees don’t have to pay an entry fee so there’s nothing to lose. My story is … Continue reading
New novel: The Newcomer Have you ever wondered if you were really a robot or perhaps an alien? I’d be surprised. Nobody has reason to doubt their personhood. My latest novel, The Newcomer, is about an android, a human-like, human-looking robot. … Continue reading
Who Searches for Obscenities? In a post two weeks ago, I described sanitizing a manuscript, turning “shit” into “crap” and “assholes” into “scumbags.” (See http://billadamsphd.net/2015/04/16/changing-happy-to-glad/). To my surprise the hit rate on my site jumped from 10 a day to nearly 200 … Continue reading
May 9th, 2015 meeting – Financial Crimes AND the Writer-Editor Relationship I’ll be there for the monthly Arizona Mystery Writers meeting, because it’s interesting, and because I’m the emcee. A representative from the TPD Financial Crimes Unit walks the … Continue reading
A Fine Pancake, It Is O’Brien, Flann. (1967) The Third Policeman. Champaigne, Ill.: Dalkey Archive (209pp) This strange tale is strongly reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. An unnamed narrator in 19th century Ireland tells his first-person story of stumbling into … Continue reading
What’s in a Word? When I was in the corporate world, I would release planning and budget documents to committees for review and every person would make revisions, just to show that they could, and the whole document would have … Continue reading
Art and Craft Corbett, David (2013). The Art of Character: Creating Memorable Characters for Fiction Film, and TV. New York: Penguin. 383 pp. This widely praised book is definitely worth reading, especially the first 120 pages, and the last 65, … Continue reading