VALENTINES DAY IN VALENTINES, VIRGINIA by Teresa Inge

In the early days of my relationship with AJ—who would later become my husband—he made an annual trek to Valentines, Virginia to mail a Valentine’s Day card to me bearing the distinctive Valentines, Virginia postmark. Back then, I lived in North Carolina while he was in Virginia, making each card a cherished memory.  

Because Virginia is famously known for its “Virginia is for Lovers” slogan, nowhere does the spirit of Valentine’s Day shine brighter than in Valentines, Virginia. As February arrives, this charming small-town transforms into a celebration of romance with a scenic backdrop for the holiday. With its friendly atmosphere and unique traditions, Valentines welcomes both locals and visitors to join in the festivities. 

WHAT ORGANIZING TYPE ARE YOU? by Yvonne Saxon

Beware of online quizzes! There you are, minding your own business, staying out of the cold by surfing the Internet, and there it is in big bold letters “What type of organizer are you?” You’ve heard of personality types, but did you know you have a distinct organizing type? Well, of course you need to know what yours is, don’t you? You’re in luck—I took a deep dive into organizing types so you wouldn’t have to.

Now I thought I already knew mine, but I typed “How to find your organizing type” in the search box anyway. First, I found the quizzes. Numerous sites assured me that I could take their quiz and by understanding my own organizing style get my house in order and it could stay that way! I couldn’t wait, so I dove right in. 

1950s MARKETING CAMPAIGNS AND THE MYTH OF THE HAPPY HOUSEWIFE by Ellen Butler

Ariadne Winter is a career-driven journalist determined to claw her way up the newsroom ladder and land her dream job as an investigative reporter. Accidentally stumbling over a couple of dead bodies should fast-track that ambition—but until she’s granted access to the hard-news, male-dominated “boys’ club,” she’s stuck churning out fluff for Ladies’ Lifestyle Magazine.

During World War II, women proved they could excel at every level of the workforce, including jobs long reserved for men. When the war ended and soldiers returned home, that progress was swiftly reversed. Women were pushed out of their careers and urged to retreat into domesticity—to marry, have babies, and keep house. The glossy marketing campaigns of the 1950s reinforced this message with seductive precision, selling a narrowly defined vision of American happiness. At the heart of that vision stood women—particularly white, middle-class housewives—who were not only the target audience, but the product itself: living advertisements for an idealized domestic bliss.

What’s often overlooked is who was crafting these messages. The vast majority of 1950s advertising copy, strategy, and imagery was created by men. Madison Avenue was a male-dominated world, and its assumptions about women shaped every headline, illustration, and slogan. The result was marketing that didn’t merely reflect sexism—it actively reinforced it.

Writing for Women, Without Women

Advertising agencies of the era employed very few women in creative roles. Men wrote the copy, designed the campaigns, and decided what women wanted, needed, or feared. Housewives were treated less as complex individuals and more as a set of predictable anxieties: keeping husbands happy, maintaining social status, and avoiding domestic failure.

Campaigns routinely spoke to women while simultaneously talking down to them. Instructions were simplified to the point of condescension, and humor often hinged on the assumption that women were scatterbrained, overly emotional, or incapable of understanding technology without male guidance.

Ads for everything from vacuum cleaners to floor wax implied that women were solely responsible for household perfection—and that any flaw reflected a personal shortcoming.

The Language of Control

The underlying misogyny of 1950s marketing was often subtle, wrapped in cheerful illustrations and reassuring tones. Advertisements promised women that buying the right product would make them better wives, better mothers, and more desirable partners. Happiness was framed not as self-fulfillment, but as male approval.

Many ads leaned on thinly veiled threats: a dirty kitchen might drive your husband away, the wrong

coffee might embarrass you in front of guests, outdated appliances might mark you as lazy or incompetent. Even beauty and hygiene campaigns frequently suggested that a woman’s value was contingent on pleasing others—especially men.

In some of the most egregious examples, ads joked about disciplining wives, excused infidelity as a result of poor housekeeping, or portrayed women as childlike figures needing instruction. These weren’t fringe messages—they were mainstream, published in widely circulated magazines and displayed in everyday spaces.

Selling Stability Through Submission

The cultural context matters. After the upheaval of war, American society was eager to reestablish “normalcy.” Marketing played a critical role in pushing women out of wartime jobs and back into the home, reframing domestic labor as both a privilege and a patriotic duty.

Advertising didn’t just sell products; it sold compliance. The ideal woman was cheerful, attractive, efficient, and grateful—fulfilled by service and untroubled by ambition. Any dissatisfaction could be cured, the ads implied, with a new appliance, a better cleaner, or a more obedient smile.

Looking Back With Clearer Eyes

Today, 1950s marketing campaigns are often remembered nostalgically for their illustration style and clever taglines. But beneath the charm lies a system that normalized inequality and codified misogyny into consumer culture.

Examining these campaigns now isn’t about judging the past by modern standards—it’s about understanding how deeply advertising shapes social expectations. The messages written by men in the 1950s didn’t just sell soap and stoves; they sold a limited and damaging vision of womanhood whose effects lingered long after the ads were taken down.

The pastel colors may fade, but the lessons remain worth examining.

USING GENEALOGY TO CREATE CHARACTERS - Part 1 By Guest Blogger Allie Marie

Hello, I’m Allie Marie and I’m new to the Sand in Our Shorts blog team. I look forward to adding my thoughts alongside other contributing members of Mystery by the Sea, my chapter of Sisters in Crime. I’d originally planned to write suspense and thrillers, but ancestry research led me toward a different kind of mystery than I’d intended. Most of my novels are historical mysteries with paranormal elements.

Before I begin, however, I have a few questions to ask. Do you write period pieces that require research for character development? Are you an avid genealogist wishing you could turn your family’s story into a book or a novel? Are you creating family sagas that cover generations of descendants but are not sure where to begin? 

I learned (the hard way) there’s an easier method to create fictional or historical characters and families than the way I started. Through a short series of blogs, I hope to offer some of the lessons I learned while writing my genre. 

Let me take you back to how it all started for me. From the age of 10, I was an avid reader of teen sleuth mysteries, with star detectives like Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, the Hardy Boys, and more. It was then that I developed one of my two life dreams. The first was to become a flight attendant—but that’s a whole other life story to tell someday! The second was to become a mystery writer.

Over the years, I devoured more mysteries, graduating to the more famous literary like Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, and even a bit of Mickey Spillane and Sam Spade for a little while. Eventually, gothic mysteries with brooding family sagas heavily changed my reading preferences and future writing goals.

In spite of these early influences in my life, I never expected or planned to fight crime and solve mysteries as a real-life police officer myself. Oddly enough, it was my interest in aviation—that other life story I mentioned earlier—that guided me toward a career as a police officer. 

I served for more than twenty years in local law enforcement, and after retirement, participated in several international policing missions over the next fourteen years. Stories of my experiences and adventures literally filled notebooks and journals, promising to provide plenty of material for those suspense and crime novels I wanted to write.  

However, a different kind of investigation process took over my writing plans. I discovered colonial ancestors in my family tree. Not only did genealogy take me down the rabbit hole of family research, it also inspired the fictional characters of my True Colors Series. These historical mysteries include ghosts haunting the modern family, while flashbacks and time travelers take the reader back to the American Revolution—and forced me to create generations of families that impact each other and the entire storyline.

If only I’d known then what I know now! I might not have created a matriarch with a date of birth that would make her a thirteen-year-old mother when I added a new character to the mix. I would have had an easier time following my colonial family as they migrated from New England to Virginia. 

Through my next blogs, I hope to offer a series of posts that help a genealogist researcher who is considering writing their family’s history, whether as a fictionalized version of real life, a non-fiction book of family history, or a family memoir. This topic will also assist authors of historical fiction or period writing as well, to gather new ideas to reflect the past in a written format. Hope you’ll stay on the journey with me!

 

   

BEST WRITING ADVICE (PART FIVE) : OUTLINE IT ALREADY! by Penny Hutson

If you haven’t been able to finish your book by “pantsing” or what’s often called the discovery method, for God’s sake, outline it already!

I saved this topic for last because it was the single most important element that led to the completion of my first book length manuscript. I can’t overstate that. I spent decades trying unsuccessfully without one. Now, I even outline short stories and have two published in separate anthologies and two nonfiction pieces in a third anthology (links below). That can’t be a coincidence.

For an explanation of the difference between outlining (also call plotting,) and “pantsing,” read my article “To Plot or to Pants? That is the Question.” (click link below)

https://sandinourshorts.blogspot.com/2024/07/to-pants-or-to-plot-that-is-question.html

Benefits of Outlining

Outlining has amazing benefits, especially with longer works, but first, let’s recognize that outlining is also writing. It’s simply the writer telling the story only without the scene-by-scene details or specific conversations that make up each chapter. You’re still writing and creating sentences and paragraphs. Give up that it’s hard work, no fun, or limits your creativity. In fact, it can be more fun and freeing to outline because you know you’re only writing a short number of pages. It’s a lot easier to throw out or revise ten or twenty pages than 200 or more. It’s also easier to see major flaws in shorter pieces.

Many successful writers who’ve published books with and without outlines, profess that outlining dramatically reduced their amount of revision. Plus, if you know what’s going into each chapter ahead of time, you don’t have to write everything in order. You can write that juicy romance scene right now, if you’ve got ideas bubbling up for that.  

Once you have a viable story or the major points of each chapter written out in complete sentences (versus a general idea in your head), you can either start writing the book or add to the outline.

Ways to Expand Your Outline

After the initial five-to-ten-page outline of the entire book, some writers will then create a short (2-4 sentence) summary of each chapter with a list of its characters and the chapter’s purpose. Others go even further with one or two sentences about each scene or section within each chapter and it’s purpose. This may seem like a lot of extra or unnecessary work, but I promise it will pay off. It’s much easier to see any flaws in your storyline or book’s overall premise, but most writers admit it’s easier to create a scene or chapter when they know what’s supposed to happen or be discussed ahead of time.

Picking an Outlining Method

I used the Snowflake Outline Method and really liked it, but many other are available in books or online. Pick one and stick with it. Don’t fall into the trap of starting a new method every time you get stuck or think it’s not working for you. Keep going. If you haven’t completed a book without an outline, consider that any outline is better than none. There’s no one right method or only one that works for you. And, you can always try another method with the next book.

I hope you enjoyed the fifth and final installment in my Best Writing Advice series. If you have any comments, questions, or writing advice of your own, I’d love to hear from you.

My next blog (topic to be determined) will post here on “Sand in Our Shorts” March 28. See you then!

Penny Hutson also has two short mystery stories available in the following anthologies:

Costal Crimes 2 : Death Takes A Vacation 

Also available on Amazon and from Wildside Press 

Click here 

A Right Cozy Historical Crime (A Right Cozy Crime Series)

Available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback

Click here

 

HEADIN’ DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE – WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAPE By Michael Rigg

Lagerstroemia indica 
a/k/a crape myrtle

Even though fiction is all about using your imagination and making stuff up, writers still have to be accurate. Next time you write a novel or short story, have your protagonist hesitate long enough to release the safety on her Glock before shooting. You’ll hear about it from your readers. Believe you me, you’ll hear about it.

So, unless you’re already a subject-matter expert, in-depth research is an absolute must. This is true for even relatively unimportant and mundane details. But, be careful. Once you start down the research path on a particular issue, you might find yourself mired in “find-the-facts quicksand,” struggling to get back to writing.

My current work in progress, Shadows of Frenchmen, is set in New Orleans. One of the characters receives a text message asking her to come to a meeting at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA). Here’s part of the lead-in to the meeting:

She inhaled deeply, then let her breath out slowly as she crossed the street, entered the museum grounds, and traveled along the sidewalk adjacent to Lelong Drive. Ahead stood the museum’s massive, fortress-like main building. In season, crepe myrtles lining each side of the drive showcased a beautiful, yet eerie, combination of green leaves, magenta blossoms, and silvery-gray Spanish moss dangling from the branches. On a chilly midwinter afternoon, the trees seemed bland, uninviting. And under the circumstances, foreboding. 

Nothing particularly worrisome. I’d visited NOMA. I rode the streetcar, exited at the end of the line near Bayou St. John, sauntered down Lelong Drive, and entered the museum. I took pictures of the trees lining the drive. Like I said, in-depth research. Quicksand avoided. Back on the “write” path.

 Ha.

One of my Beta Readers sent me a text with a link to a blog, “Crepe Myrtle or Crape Myrtle? The Real Story Behind the Name.”

Say what? CRAPE myrtle? My feet now mired in the fact-check bog, sinking ever so slowly, I dove down the rabbit hole.

Turns out that most “plant experts” (you know, botanists) say the proper English name for the Lagerstroemia indica is crape myrtle. Yet, there is a substantial portion of the reasonably intelligent populace (including folks at a garden nursery in suburban New Orleans and the people running the NOMA Facebook page) who say it’s CREPE. So, after repeated volleys listing this website and that article on both sides of the issue, what to do to get back on track?

Simple. Ask the ultimate Fact-Checker-in-Chief—my spouse. The answer? It’s CRAPE.

So now comes the next step. What will the Publisher say during the final editing process? Don’t worry. I’ve done the research. I have the source material. I’m ready for whatever crape they throw at me. Or is it whatever crepe they throw at me? Oh, crap.

PROMPTS TO INSPIRE YOU, PART FOUR, by Max Jason Peterson

Greetings, fellow creatives! I’m here with another installment of prompts to inspire you! I often provide prompt sessions in person at local conventions, for local writing groups, and online for Max’s Writers Café, which are free, library-sponsored live Zoom workshops for short prose and poetry. Hampton Public Library hosts these each spring and fall, open to ages 18+ (each session requires free Eventbrite registration; see the collection here for the upcoming workshops). But as readers of this blog, you can participate on your own schedule!

My wish for you is that you would come away from these prompts with the seeds for new short works of prose or poetry (or both). The combination of the prompt + a new work you haven’t thought about previously + a time limitation really seems to help kickstart creativity. These should be thought of as creative nuggets that you may wish to polish or continue with later. They won’t be perfect! And that’s fine.

How to do this: You’ll need some form of timer. Try to be strict with yourself about this—when you are, it really seems to boost your ability to dive into the prompt and come up with something unexpected.

Set your timer for ten minutes. Read through the prompt first, then start the timer. Write for ten minutes. Then stop! See what you came up with. It might indeed be something you want to continue working on right now before you lose your train of thought. If so, I suggest treating it as a new prompt session and giving yourself ten more minutes to finish getting your thoughts down.

Today’s prompts are all mystery-oriented.

1. Write a short scene from the point of view of a household pet who is witnessing or has witnessed a crime. The pet might belong to the victim, the sleuth, or the murderer. Does the pet try to help the victim or sleuth? Or act like an accomplice to the villain?

2. What if your murderer had superpowers? What if your sleuth could use magic? From any aspect of the paranormal, supernatural, or fantasy and science fiction spectrum, pick one power for each and write a short confrontational scene in which the sleuth saves someone, but the murderer gets away—for now. The characters don't necessarily have to wield their powers—there could be a standoff here. Or what if they did wield their powers, to humorous effect?

3. If you are writing a cozy mystery, plant your sleuth in the middle of a hardboiled detective story or noir novel. If you are writing hardboiled or noir, have your detective suddenly appear in the middle of a cozy world. You can play it straight by rewriting a scene you have in mind from this opposite perspective, as if that had been the tale all along. Or it could be quite funny, in a fish-out-of-water way.

4. Think about the characters in a mystery series you enjoy. There may be some special quirk or motif that recurs in a way that delights the reader, such as when Spenser recites poetry, Holmes deduces amazing things about a stranger, or Archie Goodwin drinks a glass of milk in preference to alcohol. Now think about your work in progress. Brainstorm some interesting quirks or motifs that might help to make it unique or cause the reader delight when they recognize them.

5. Inspired by Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing: This is a two-part exercise.

Part 1: 3 minutes. Make a list of things that scare you or that you find eerie, mysterious, or fascinating. Keep writing for three minutes—don't let your pen leave the page until the timer goes off.

Part 2: 10 minutes. Select one of the words on the list and just start writing about it. See what comes out!

If you’d like more prompts, here are some earlier installments in this series:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

----------------------

Max Gardner (he/they) is a fiction writer & award-winning poet published under a variety of bylines, including Max Jason Peterson and Adele Gardner. A poetry collection, Halloween Hearts, is available from Jackanapes Press, while over 500 stories, poems, art, and articles appear in Analog, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, PodCastle, Daily Science Fiction, and more. Gardner serves as literary executor for father and mentor Delbert R. Gardner; Muse Mansion, a collection of poems by both father and firstborn, will be released soon by San Francisco Bay Press.