Here's something from my mailbag. "Dear Michael, do you need to do good in school if you want to be a writer? I stink at school and all my friends laugh at me when I tell them I want to write, but I'm serious." Followed by a sentence or two of "I need your words to encourage me" or some such nonsense. Fortunately, a writing sample is rarely attached. If it is, either it's excellent or it stinks like rancid yak butter. Do you have to be good in school? Given what's passing for English in some places, I'd certainly like to see more effort given to school. If you're a student reading this, please try to learn something while you can. If you aspire to be an author and you did poorly in school, or if you're just plain uneducated, don't let it stop you. What we do as authors isn't taught in school. They teach grammar, and bless them. I can't teach that subject. If you're very fortunate, you'll stumble across some te...

The month of May has a plethora of holidays, some somber, such as Memorial Day, which is always the last Monday of the month, and some wacky, such as National Hamburger Day, which is today (May 28). You can find a list of May holidays here (thanks for the link, Dani). This list is fun reading in and of itself. While I'm not certain how many books feature National Hamburger Day or International Tuba Day, here are some lists for some of the more prominent holidays. I have no reading lists for National Tuba Day (first Friday in May), sorry. artist unknown; tuba is by Besson [Public domain] May Day. Let's start at the very beginning! Mystery Fanfare, always on the job, has suggested mystery books for your perusal . The website Books Tell You Why has some classics . Leaning left, here is Listopia's Verso May Day list . Mother's Day. As you might expect, Mother's Day is well represented in reading lists, including the following. Cozy Mystery List, H...

Recent studies tell us most Americans are spending too much time with their computers, smartphones, and other devices. At the beginning, writers tended to follow the advice of agents and editors who felt that platform was all important, and platform had to include a website, blog, and a strong social media presence. That was the trap no one anticipated. Do the sites help authors and their publishers sell books? I’m guessing not too many. At least, not enough to warrant spending more than a few minutes a day updating, reading, and/or tweeting/retweeting. Image via Pixabay Facebook , more than Twitter , is also a hotbed of bandwagons, started by goodness knows who and jumped on by everyone who can’t resist being part of the latest groupthink, hivemind, lemmings-jumping-off-the-cliff fad. I don't believe that sells books either. The part of my online activities that keeps me in touch with family and friends is not all bad. Believing that being online more than a few minutes...

At night, the bees circle Lily Owen's room like airplanes in a holding pattern above a busy airport, their wings shiny bits of glitter in the darkness. During the day, she hears them tunnel endlessly inside her bedroom walls. Fascinated by their industriousness and behavior, she watches and listens with both fascination and delight. So begins The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. The story goes on when 14-year-old Lily runs away from her abusive father. She's accompanied by her black nanny Rosaleen, who has just been assaulted by racist white men incensed by the escalating Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Looking for work and lodging, they ultimately arrive at the home of the Boatwright sisters, well-to-do beekeepers who operate a successful honey business despite being African Americans in the South.  This book, the author's first novel, introduces us to both memorable characters and the strengths and frailties of human behavior, as do many other stories ...

During April and May, I’ve been doing a lot of driving. I rented audio books from the library by authors I like. I got two at a time for the two round trips in case I didn’t like one or the other. Book number one, written in first person, droned on about the main characters inner feelings. Now don’t get me wrong, I like digging deep into a character. It’s a way for the reader to get inside his head (the character was male) and feel what he’s thinking. It’s also a way for a writer to become that character and express more precisely how he thinks about a situation. One of the problems with that process is when the introspection goes on so long that the character seems self-absorbed. Lordy, lordy, I couldn’t get through the second disc. This was from a very popular author, male, and it reminded me why I stopped reading him years ago. I always felt he was writing for women by pushing the sensitive side of the characters. Now again, don’t get me wrong, I like sensitive as long as the se...

As we are well into spring in most parts of the United States and Canada, our thoughts turn to gardens and lawns and flowers that bloom in May. I remember early May was the time for me to plant pansies for my mother as a Mother's Day present. Photo by Maryann Miller She loved those little "people" flowers with the smile she always saw in them. The smile that would elicit one from her, even during the most difficult times of our lives. And there were plenty of difficult times. It was an annual event - this gifting of pansies - and the flower soon became a binding force between us and my sister. Today, as we look ahead to Mother's Day - our 5th without her - my sister and I will think of pansies and cardinals - the two things from nature that Mother most loved - and that will bring us comfort. For many years, I wanted to write a book about my mother, who came out of a horrible childhood and challenging adulthood to become one of the strongest women I've eve...

As Maryann Miller detailed in her March post , recently a hack named Cristiane Serruya came up with what she thought was a clever scheme. She trimmed paragraphs from multiple books, quilted them together, then published them as her own work. She changed the titles, character names, and a word here or there. The results were a bit like Frankenstein's monster, but she got away with it, for a while. A fan of romance writer Courtney Milan's books noticed something odd when reading Ms. Serruya's book. The passages seemed a little too familiar to Milan's The Duchess War . She put the pieces together and sent an email to Ms. Milan. When contacted, the thief at first denied then deflected, blaming "ghostwriters" she hired for the crime. The battle went viral on Twitter with the hashtag #CopyPasteCris. Once the scam was revealed, a deeper dive showed Ms. Serruya had stolen from over forty authors, including Romance legend Nora Roberts. The affected authors might ...

As a student of Spanish, my goal was to think in Spanish. Skip the word-by-word translation so I'd have the necessary speed to speak and listen. I know words in Spanish that I'd be hard pressed to translate. Usually profanity, I confess. Chingow! Back when I taught English in China, my students studied grammar for years, and knew it better than you or I. They read. They wrote. But speaking involves moving faster than that. In conversation, we don't have time to write it first and make sure it's all grammatically flawless, then read it aloud, perhaps after a bit of rehearsal. So, I tried to give them a chance to practice putting words together on the fly, rules be damned. The rules they'd internalized would kick in and keep them comprehensible, which would build their confidence in their ability to keep creating conversation that way. This is not unlike what we go through as authors. First we study rulebooks, perhaps take some classes, and conclude just about...

The many faces of April, from April Fool's Day to Easter to "April showers bring May flowers." Claude Shafer   (The Tacoma Times), Public Domain   As we close in on the end of April, I figure we can't turn our backs on the month without a quick look at what books might be out there with an April Fool's theme. Let's start with mysteries. (After all, mysteries are basically designed to mess with readers' minds, and then jump out, shouting "Fooled you!" at the end.) We have this handful from the Cozy Mystery List . Hurray for Janet Rudolph, whose Mystery Fanfare blog always comes through for holiday/special day reads. April's Fool's is no exception .  Moving away from murder and mayhem... The blog Borrow.Read.Repeat. offers " Laugh-out-loud reads " for April Fool's Day. Listopia has Hoover Library's Insatiable Reads' April Fools (It's Always Good to Laugh) list, including Howl: A collection of the ...

April is the month of fooling people. It makes me think back to a time long ago when I was young, foolish, daring, and maybe a bit irresponsible. I’ll keep it chronological, so I’ll start in the fifth grade. I always wanted to be foreign and speak another language. Even when I was in grade school, I was fascinated with anyone from another country. In the fifth grade, my home room teacher was Greek, so when two sisters newly arrived from Greece were placed in her class without regard for their ages just because Miss Thanaglou spoke Greek, I was right there making friends. I was invited to their house and served a bowl of Greek tomato soup with lots of lemon. An older sister came in and whisked the bowl away thinking I wouldn't like it, but I did. I learned how to write in Greek, really translating from English to Greek letters. I still remember how to count in Greek, say stand up and sit down; hello, how are you, fine thank you, and you? Recipe: Domata Soupa - Épices de Cru ...

Not all stories have a traditional good guy and bad guy, nor should they. Readers love compelling characters, and they love conflict that propels a story forward. However, no requirement dictates those characters must wear either black or white hats. Many shades of gray reflect personality, decision processes, lifestyles, character traits, and the list goes on. One option that steps away from the black hat/white hat scenario is a foolish character that unwittingly (or not) upends the lives of a spouse, friends, family, workmates, etc. How can such unwise characters keep readers turning pages? Let's consider a story possibility where foolish choices rule the roost and drive the story to a costly conclusion. Tears coursed down Marisa's cheeks and fell onto the clothes she was throwing into the large suitcase. She brushed them away, but they persisted. The last thing she wanted to do was leave Tom, but reality was a stern teacher, an unforgiving taskmaster, a destroyer of...

In the month of April Fools' Day, it seems like a good time to look at one of the characters we love to hate: The Con Man. He can appear in any genre. He can be the hero or the villain. The Con Man plot is most often used in Mystery or Thriller, but can be used in other genres. Cons can be conducted in person or via mail or the internet these days. There are successful swindlers and not so successful ones. Whether Dick is good at the game or laughable depends on your plot. Cons have been gaining people’s confidence since the population grew large enough to support snake oil salesmen. Let’s take an in-depth look at what makes a con tick. Dick the scammer is selfish and greedy. He isn’t lazy. Conning people takes a lot of energy and he is constantly in danger of getting caught. Traveling light and avoiding relationships is a good idea. Dick can be a charming predator. The most deadly scammer is a true sociopath. If you want to humanize him, give Dick a smidgen of conscience. ...

Next to running in the park with my two best friends, spending time at the small library on the corner of my street was my favorite thing to do in the summer when I was growing up. My girlfriends and I would go there almost every other day to get a pile of books to read at some comfortable place, often a park about a mile away. We were into bike riding, too. Fast-forward a lot of years to when I started my writing career as a journalist. Then I wasn’t just going to the library to get books to read for myself or for my kids. This was a time when I relied heavily on libraries, and the wonderful reference librarians, to help me when I needed facts and figures for articles and my nonfiction books. (Kudos to the librarians at the Plano Public Library. They saved my bacon more than once.) During that time I wrote nine books for  Rosen Publishing that included Coping With Weapons and Violence in School and on your Streets, and the librarians proved invaluable in steering me towar...

Yes, it’s possible to enjoy using Twitter instead of getting stressed, frustrated, and downright angry. How? I have four main suggestions for those who truly want to use Twitter to make connections around the world without tearing their hair out along the way.This post assumes a reader already has knowledge of how Twitter works and how frustrating it can be. However, if you’ve never tried out the site because of all the bad stuff you’ve heard, I can assure you there are ways to keep the monster under control and have fun. Connect with people who share your interests. If you're on Twitter because you want to see and engage in vicious political discussions, it will be easy to find followers who are willing to agree, fight, stalk, and threaten. But if you want to avoid that kind of community and instead search for those who are more interested in knitting, cats, books, mountain climbing, etc., begin by posting tweets, liking, and retweeting the things you see that fit...