Ah, my dearies, it appears that my cousin, The Style Maven, has run off somewhere. Perhaps with that charming-in-all-ways cabana boy that we saw last week at the club. I've called and called and looked and looked, but she is nowhere to be found. Of course, her mother, my dear Aunt Sadie, denies that her darling daughter would do such a thing, but I know my cousin better than her mother does. Enough said about that before I let loose a little secret or two that I'd rather not. I'm sure my cousin will be back when she tires of her little "vacation," but in the meantime, I must do my best to continue in the fine tradition of writing lessons masked in humor and snark that she established oh so well here. You may recall that  a few weeks ago, I wrote about  body parts , that some authors move about all willy nilly - namely eyes - without giving a thought to the fact that eyes do not like to roll all over the place as if they have lost their sockets. Since then...

Hello my dearies. I'm greeting you on behalf of my cousin, The Style Maven. And in case you're wondering, I'm not her, pretending to be someone else. Rather, I'm her snarky cousin in charge of policing errant body parts - eyes and other parts that are sometimes asked to do things that...well, seem to be a bit of a challenge, to put it politely. Not so politely, I'd say to the writers, "What the hell were you thinking?" So, before I totter off to lunch with my bingo friends, let me set forth a few of the most irritating things I stumble over whilst trying to enjoy a good story. Let's start with eyes. How many times do you see them rolling when they shouldn't roll? I cringe when I see them struggling to do the bidding of an author. You could say I'm super sensitive to this and should take an allergy pill before opening the next book I hope to enjoy, but why should the onus be on me, the reader? Really, my darlings, consider from whence...