We are going down memory lane here at the Blood Red Pencil during the month of December, recalling and honoring BRP regulars and guest contributors. Today, we raise a glass (of eggnog, perhaps, because it is the season) in memory of Dr. John Yeoman , PhD Creative Writing. Prior to receiving his doctorate degree, Dr. Yeoman spent 40 years as a commercial author and chairman of a major PR company. He wrote children's books and historical mysteries for adults and ran the Writers' Village story competition. Dr. Yeoman died unexpectedly in 2016, but his words and his works live on. Dr. Yeoman's Hippo Yeoman series of instructional novels (unobtrusive tips explain the writing techniques used to craft the stories) are still available from Amazon Kindle, and are well worth working through:       His many insightful posts at the Blood Red Pencil include: How to Win a Writing Competition   How To Pitch A Self-Published Novel to A Publisher - Part One   How ...

Short answer: I don’t. Longer answer: I first got the idea for A Dead Guy at the Summerhouse when I was a young adult, before young adult was even a label. Very long answer: A friend had given me some books in the genre that was known then as Gothic. Remember Gothics? Young girl goes to large house filled with wealthy eccentrics, usually with a threatening figure and a helpful figure (often romance is involved), the threatening one turns out to be Good and the helpful one turns out to be Bad, much fear and emotion, happy ending. The covers usually featured the house with the young girl (usually in her nightdress) running away under a full moon, looking back over her shoulder in terror. I thought it would be fun to write one with a young man instead of a young girl. I thought it would be fun if, instead of trying to winkle out the house’s secrets, everybody would be trying to share them with him and he would be all, “I don’t want to know. I don’t want any drama or excitement....

What is a “defining moment” book? Well, for me, it is a book that made me think, made me move, made me change something in how I wrote. Most of the stories and books I wrote pre-defining moment book were relationship based, delving on the lives and loves of my characters. If I had to pick a genre, I would say it was women’s fiction with a heavy romantic element. That all changed for me when I read Mary Higgins Clark’s All Around the Town . I was taking a novel writing class as an elective and for the class, we had to select a book we would read and analyze. While we did that, we would write the first three chapters of our own novel in the same genre as the book we selected. I had always loved mystery, thriller, and suspense fiction, but never thought I would or could write it. There’s so much to think about when writing a mystery and making sure the puzzle(s) fit just seemed too daunting. So, as a challenge, I picked AATT , one of the few books from Clark that I hadn’t read. ...

Have you made any New Year’s Resolutions? Do any of them pertain to writing? If so, they’re probably something like “write more” or “write for an hour every day” or “finish the book I’ve been working on for three years.” As writers, we all tend to make these kinds of resolutions or promises to ourselves. This year, I’m trying something a bit different. There are plenty of resolutions I could make – and a lot of them I’ve made before. But in 2010 I’m going to try to become … and here I’m not quite sure of the word to use … more organized or less haphazard or more efficient or more structured. I seem to be the kind of person who works best with structure and a check list. I’ve managed to put out a weekly newsletter for ten years partly because it always comes out on the same day each week. By the time Thursday rolls around, I’d dang well better have that newsletter ready to go. So I do. We don’t have overdue bills because I pay the bills on the same day every week. Each day I make a ...