Words can heal. Words can hurt. Words can bring the real world sharply into focus or wrap us in worlds that only exist in our imaginations. To experience some of the power of words to motivate one to act, check out Shonell Bacon's recent Blood Red Pencil post, How a SUD or Two Inspires Me into Action . Words can also be a comfort. During these fraught times, I find myself turning more and more to an examination of words and language. Not so much the weighty words, such as justice, truth, and compassion, but random words and expressions that bubble up as I write. Since my Silver Rush mystery series takes place in the 19th century U.S. West, I need to be conscious of words, idioms, and slang that pop from my mind to keyboard to draft—are they contemporary to the times, or are they anachronistic? Anachronistic or not? Thank goodness for references such as this one. For instance, take the word "fraught," which I use in the paragraph just above. Step back, turn that wo...

This month's theme is perfectly timed since I recently returned from the Public Safety Writers Association Conference (PSWA) in Las Vegas. In addition to meeting and hearing from police officers, PIs, firefighters, 9-1-1 dispatchers, hazmat responders, military personnel, a postal inspector, SWAT members, and more about their jobs and experiences, I participated in a panel titled "Perfecting Your Writing. " Thanks to my fellow panelists, I am able to provide a selection of #writing tricks and tools for your perusal. Below, you'll probably find something old , something new , definitely a lot borrowed , and a bit of blue . Without further ado... From Thonie Hevron SmartEdit is wonderful free software that takes some of the pain out of culling those oft-repeated words. You can pre-set your own filters. I always use this. Hemingway is a fee-based (free online and app is one-time $19.99 and well worth it) program that identifies confusing and complicated sentenc...

Ah… Valentine's Day! Bring on the romance and the love, the chocolate, and the lacy, cutout paper hearts. Sooooo lovely! (By Chordboard - Self, from material in my possession., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4310800) ] --> But I'm a mystery author, so I can't help but think of the "dark side" as well: The downside of love—jealousy, possessiveness, obsession.  The poisoned box of candy.  The scissors, sharp enough to cut paper, but maybe sharp enough for other, more deadly uses…  ... And now for the dark side. "Jealousy" by Edvard Munch, 1895 (Edvard Munch [Public domain]) Whether you prefer the light-hearted romance or the emotional ruin of this special day dedicated to lovers—or something in between—there's something for you to read as the following lists show… Let's start with some cozy-with-murder mysteries, provided by The Cozy Mystery List . Here's the latest list from the ever-...

Now, when I was growing up, I was admonished by my parents, "Don't toot your own horn," "Let your work speak for itself," and so on and so forth. In this day and age, however, if you don't pick up that horn and BLOW, no one is going to have any idea that you've got something to celebrate. Get out there and blow your horn! (Adriaen van Ostade [CC0]. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951) Since Blood Red Pencil has designated January as the month to reflect on the past year, here are some 2018 writing-related triumphs I feel pretty darn good about. A Dying Note , the sixth in my Silver Rush historical mystery series, was published by Poisoned Pen Press in April 2018. Whew! Seeing a book in print is ALWAYS something to celebrate. The fact that it garnered positive reviews in Publishers Weekly , Booklist , and Kirkus just enhanced the glow. Just about the time that the book came out in audio (which pleased me grea...

When I was researching for my latest Silver Rush book, A DYING NOTE, I used an 1886 “business directory map” to work out what businesses were in the neighborhood of my fictional D & S Music Store in San Francisco. That is where I bumped up against “A. C. Robison, Importer and Dealer in Birds and cages, etc.” My mind began churning. Birds, eh? What kinds of birds did people keep as pets in the late 19 th century? Birds were popular pets in the late 19th century. By Miami U. Libraries - Digital Collections [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Well, I couldn’t let a question like that go unanswered. I turned to the internet, and down the rabbit hole I went…. According to the article “ Our American Birds ,” by Michael K. Boyer, which appeared in Godey’s Magazine , September 1889, songbirds were popular. There is the canary, of course, but also a variety of finches: the goldfinch, the indigo finch, and the Nonpareil are mentioned. Other birds inclu...

When I heard Flora was the topic for April, I didn’t think of my backyard. Instead, I thought of era-appropriate names for the women characters who populate the setting I write about—the late 1800s U.S. Flora sounds so “old-fashioned.” Surely there was a blooming of Floras, Florences, Roses, Violets, Daisys, and all those floral-type names during this era? Faced with that question, I did what I usually do when musing on the unknown: I went a-researching and geeked out a bit… My first stop was the Social Security Administration, which has a great site for researching popular baby names for any decade going back to 1880. I pulled up the ranking of names for babies born in the 1880s in the U.S. here . And then, I made a little chart of all the flower names I could identify, plus the ranking for "Inez," the name of my Silver Rush series protagonist:  Most popular name for baby girls? Mary. Out of 1,399,571 female births, 91,668 little ones were Marys. (Ida came in at ...

~ We are delighted to welcome historical mystery author Ann Parker to our blogging team. ~ When it comes to partners in fiction, there are all types, including love birds, best buds, and sidekicks of all kinds (for some great advice on sidekicks and how to develop them, check out Diana’s post from Feb. 1). Another flavor of fictional partner, which could overlap with the above in certain cases, could be termed the "frenemy." According to the Oxford English Dictionary , a frenemy is: "a person with whom one is friendly, despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry" or "a person who combines the characteristics of a friend and an enemy." I thought this was a very recent term, so imagine my surprise to find it dates from 1953 and was first coined by the newspaperman Walter Winchell in the Nevada State Journal in an article titled "Howz about calling the Russians our Frienemies?" (Oh, how I love to wallow around in the OED!) Frenemies can be fun...