I just returned from my high school reunion. Yes, forty years is a long time, and I'd been feeling old and fat in anticipation. I've gained fifty pounds since my skinny high school years, along with wrinkles and sags. I tried dieting this summer in preparation for the reunion, but lost about nine pounds, total. Oh, well, I wasn't deterred. After all, many I'd be seeing were life-long friends. Surely they wouldn't comment on the deteriorated state of my body,…

The big green blob who looks like Darth Vader really gone to seed is me on my ATV.

posted by Doranna

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you've been missing out--both as a reader and a writer! Over at my online hang-out (SFF Net, which hosts my newsgroup and a ton of others), writers--both published and unpublished--occasionally post short--really short--excerpts of their work--ie, "snippets." (This in turn has led to the development of snippet hounds, who go sniffing for snippets, and who howl in glee upon finding them, but that's a…

Today's a library talk day, and that means getting those ducks in a row. Do I have enough cards, books, handouts, and such? How will I look after a long drive on a hot day? And worst of all, will anyone care enough to show up?

First-time authors aren't exactly hot properties, and while libraries are usually willing to let me do my schtick, there's no guarantee patrons will show up to watch. I combat the no-name problem by approaching with a theme rather than just "Come Here and Buy My…

I occassionally blurt out statements without thinking. So I'm compiling a list of my observations, comments and personal sayings along with the meaning (if needed):

1. Roberts Rule #1: How does it affect Jim Roberts? If it doesn't, so what? Meant to defuse discussions about those things which really do nothing more than inflame passions and rile dispute. Frequently used to defuse senseless arguments.

1a. Roberts Rule of Redundancy: When called upon to speak at a public event --…

I'm off to Alaska in the morning--heading for Bouchercon and looking forward to meeting old friends and making new ones.

The great thing about the mystery world is the friendships I have made. I would not have believed, when I wrote my first mystery 11 years ago that I would have a circle of wonderful friends who are important in my life. Any of you who have not been to a mystery convention, I really recommend trying one--they are all over the place and at various times of year. We…

Creativity, like love, life, and the circulatory system, is a river. It flows where it likes, sweeping with it everything in its path when it is at its strongest. It never fails that when I have a great idea for a story, I have two, sometimes three, and that can be hard to handle. On which one should I spend the time and energy that it takes to make an idea into a finished project?

I imagine Lewis and Clark, coming to a fork in some river and wondering which one to take. Will it lead…

I’ve been on tour, and today I drove from Tucson to Phoenix, across a hundred-mile stretch of Arizona. I passed a lot of towns I’d never heard of, and it got me thinking: We all know

about the Arizona towns with butch names — Tombstone, Deadwood,

Red Rock, even Yuma. But we don’t hear much about towns with names like

Florence and Queen Creek. With nothing to do except drive, I asked

myself why, and below is the reason I came up…

I'm studying up on the history of mystery, and I've decided I need to go back and read some old stuff. Of course I knew Poe gets credit for the first mystery, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." But I need to read some of the other early guys like Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

Before the modern mystery began, the Chinese had a version of mystery fiction in which a judge or similar official is followed as he deals with the various crimes he must unravel in order to mete out punishment. It…