A DAY AT THE BEACH by Jayne Ormerod

It’s that time of year, you know, beach season. A time to pack up your beach bag and escape to the shore for bit of fun and sun (and in my case, the inevitable sunburn).

Popular activities which can only be enjoyed at the beach include body surfing, boogie boarding, sand-castle building, and fighting off seagulls for the last potato chip on your plate.

As the sun goes down, you repack your bag and head for a local beach dive bar. Popular post-day-at-the-beach drinks include Pina Colada, Mojito, Orange Crush, and the much less popular but certainly appropriate Seagull Wine. Not something I've ever heard of, but I'm picturing a nice pinot gris with a soaring seagull on its label. I could not be more wrong.

MY WRITING JOURNEY by Sheryl Jordan

People often ask me how long it takes to write my stories. My response is it varies. It took me four years to finish my first novel. While it takes me anywhere from two weeks to three months to draft my short stories.

There are many things that impact my writing. When I started my novel, I had no idea how to even begin. I just started telling the story. I wrote and wrote. Then one day my vision went from being 20/20 to severely blurred, then the darkness came. I couldn’t see anything clearly. I wasn’t completely blind, but everything around me was so dark. It was a scary time in which my life changed. I couldn’t write for months, amongst doing other tasks I considered normal everyday things such as cooking a meal or driving to the store. My vision returned two months later as mysteriously as it had diminished. Thanking God every day for the return of my sight, this was an extreme setback as I had to catch up on life and get back to doing things as I did prior to my vision depletion.

THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS by Teresa Inge

Like many kids of my generation, I read the most popular children's books that introduced me to delightful new characters, historical events, and stories that would come to stand the test of time. From simple narrative and watercolor illustrations to expanding my world and imagination, many books of my childhood managed to invoke good reading habits and a lifelong passion for immersing myself in a good book. 

Some of those books included Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Are You My Mother? and Babar. Babar had an influence on my reading development and imagination due to his adventures of living in civilization and survival in the jungle. I’ve owned a Babar stuffed animal for many years.

MY NEW AND EXCITING LIFE AS A NEWBIE WRITER by Kimberly Thorn

One of my writing goals for this year is to not only write more but to get my writing out into the world.  Put my words into action.  To be relevant.  To be heard.  To tell my stories.  With this new goal, I started taking some chances by entering contests that interested me.  But I wanted to be careful to avoid any scams. 

So far, the most interesting contest I have entered was the Writers Playground, LLC.  For this contest you have to register by a certain date.  Yes, there is a minimum entry fee of $28.  As long as you pay the entry fee before their deadline, you will receive an email from the organization on a certain date and time.  All entrants will receive the email that is the start of the contest.  In the email there are five different settings and five different characters that you are to choose one from each list to write your short story about.  In addition to these different settings and different characters, there is also a key item that you HAVE to include in your story.  Which you may use as a minor point, or it can be a major plot point, but you have to use it.  Once you chose one setting from the list and one character from the list, you have ten days to write your story.  Yes, ten days only!  You can write about anything, any genre, but you must include those three perimeters.  You also only have a maximum of 3100 words to do it in!  Next, email them your story and wait. 

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR MYSTERY, BLACK OR WITH CREAM AND SUGAR? by Yvonne Saxon

 

Choosing a mystery to read is like going into a coffee house and starting at the big board of coffee drinks: there are a lot of choices! Which one do you choose? What do those names even mean? Because mysteries are as varied as coffee drinks, why not choose you next mystery like you’d choose a coffee? How? By looking at the “menu” and the “ingredients”!

Let’s start with the basics. To make a good cup of black coffee, you need the right ratio of boiling water to high quality beans. Whether dripped, poured over, or pressed through, the right amount of water to beans will produce a satisfying cup. The right ratio of crime to be solved and interesting characters to solve it will produce a satisfying mystery.

AN INTROVERT AT A BIG MYSTERY CONFERENCE by Maria Hudgins

Malice Domestic! The wonderful mystery conference that claims to be “Not everyone’s cup of tea” is  back and in person again!

I recently came home from the conference in Bethesda, MD. I had a good time. But not, I think, as good as most other attendees. Why do I think that? Because it looked like the others were having more fun, laughing, hugging, obviously delighted to see old friends, scrambling to put tables together for breakfast, for lunch, and again for dinner. But I needed to take a break a couple of times a day to go back to my room and relax. As always, I need to have a room to myself. I look for a chance to take a walk outside the hotel. By myself.

CHARACTERS, CONFLICT, AND THE MYERS-BRIGS TYPE INDICATOR® by Michael Rigg

King Neptune
Virginia Beach Oceanfront

Writers, and readers, know the importance of characters. In Characters & Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card reminds writers of something we should know almost instinctively: “… readers want your characters to seem like real people. Whole and alive, believable and worth caring about. Readers want to get to know your characters as well as they know their own friends, their own family. As well as they know themselves.” 

But having characters worth caring about isn’t enough, is it? There has to be more to keep readers turning pages and saving their pennies to buy the next installment in your series about a serial-killer-turned-nun who runs a detective agency out of a convent. That something else is conflict. As James Scott Bell tells us in Conflict & Suspense, “Conflict has long been recognized as the engine of story. Without conflict there is no drama. Without drama, there is no interest. Without interest there is no reader. And no writing career.”