Genre Happenings

The Genesis of Hugh de Singleton, Surgeon

The period from conception to birth for humans is nine months. Gestation for fictional humans may be longer. Master Hugh de Singleton’s genesis required thirty-five years.

While teaching middle school history in Portage, Michigan, in the early 1970s, an eighth-grade student asked if I would be...

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For Writers

Write What You Don’t Know

Friends often ask what I enjoy most about writing. I explain that my favorite part of “writing” isn’t the actual writing. It’s the research. I love exploring houses and museums, tracking down names and places, and turning the crisp pages of a diary written more than a hundred years ago as I gather information to shape...
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Making A Scene

SUBPLOTS

Are your subplots as effective as your main plot? Often a novel can be enhanced by an effective secondary plot or two. Here are a few pointers:

1. Allow the subplot to grow naturally out of your characters’ (particularly the protagonist’s) personal lives. This might be a romantic subplot. Or a plot involving a problem that the character continually faces. For example, in my Hidden Faces suspense series, Annie’s son, Stephen, provides a dramatic subplot in the first three books.

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Author By Night

A Little Fiction on the Side

If you’re writing a novel while holding down a day job, it helps if your spouse is a cook or doesn’t mind eating chicken from the gas station down the street. In my case, it was the Exxon.

It also helps to lobotomize the part of your brain that controls the impulse to dust. To vacuum. To pull weeds. In fact, you should...

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