DENNIS LEHANE once said that the short story is the prose writer’s best chance for perfection. The novel is too big and unruly, but with the short story, the author can come close to getting it just right. I think Holly M. Kothe has approached perfection with her story collection Sweet Violent Femmes. The collection contains… Continue Reading
Author Archives: Richard
Reader Meet Author
Are you a reader looking for a cool way to discover new books and authors? Or are you an author marketing a book? If you’ve answered yes to either question, you should check out Bublish. Bublish is a unique book-discovery website that uses “book bubbles” to create an interface between authors and readers. The bubbles contain excerpts from… Continue Reading
The Four D’s: Part 3 – Depth of Character
Craft books and writing teachers will tell you that readers read for character. Indeed, the cornerstone of literary fiction is the complex character study. At a minimum, even the most surface-dwelling, plot-driven genre novel needs engaging characters to carry the story. These characters are not expected to confront deep emotional issues or transcend their… Continue Reading
The Final Push
Would you take a life to save a life? A cop would. A soldier would. How about a medical student? What if you were that student, and you had unrestricted access to the comatose trauma patient who shattered your personal life two months earlier, and by taking his life you could piece yours back… Continue Reading
Baby This Town Rips the Bones From Your Back …
You’d think that a guy who could write a line like that, build an anthem around it, surround that song with the likes of “Thunder Road,” “Jungleland” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” and then land the covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously (the first person to do so), you’d think a guy like that would… Continue Reading
Agatha Hattie: Queen of the Night
Are you strange parents with odd little children? If so, you will enjoy Agatha Hattie: Queen of the Night. And if you’re not strange, and your children are not odd, you will still enjoy this book. Agatha Hattie is a pretty little girl with a seemingly perfect life, but all that changes one day… Continue Reading
The Woven Tale Press
The latest issue of The Woven Tale Press is now available. What is the Woven Tale Press, you ask? To paraphrase, it’s a monthly e-magazine that scours the web in search of creative energy that all too often lies buried in a blogger’s archives (like my stuff), be it visual arts, short fiction and nonfiction, writing advice or anything… Continue Reading
That, Which and Who, Oh My!
In my last post, I discussed how I use the Find feature of Microsoft Word to hunt down and eliminate redundant redundancies from my manuscripts as I go through the final edit. I also mentioned how I’ll use Find to ferret out those pesky to be verbs and get rid of as many of those as I… Continue Reading
Eliminate Those Redundant Redundancies
I’d like to call your attention to an editing tool for the editing of redundant words and redundant word phrases that turn up in rough drafts and not-so-rough drafts. (What?) Why is this important? First, good writing is concise. Thomas Jefferson said, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” When someone writes past experience, fatally… Continue Reading
“Okay, Let’s Crack Him!”
Let’s crack him—three simple words that sent a shock wave through the ER. Three words that invited every surgery resident, internal medicine resident, medical student, respiratory therapist, lab tech, blood gas tech—and even the housekeeping staff—to flood into the room, hoping to witness the most dramatic procedure, the greatest spectacle, in all of medicine.… Continue Reading