Tag Archives: pay off

Apostrophe Rules!

This is the tale of how an apostrophe changed my life. It made me open my mind, in spite of deeply entrenched prejudices, and endowed me with hours of reading pleasure I would never have expected in a million years.check that apostrophe

 

Don’t like thrillers

Some years ago a colleague whose taste in books hardly ever chimed with mine, recommended a thriller he’d just discovered. “Fantastic plot”, he said. “Great writer. None of that stodgy grammar and fancy image nonsense. Just a plain man speaking plain thoughts.”

Two little kids reading book under blanketI groaned in spirit. “Lots of action?” He nodded enthusiastically. That meant dead bodies. Continue reading →

Plotter-Writer & the Golden Gate Murders

A Plotter-Writer Confesses

plotter-writer confessesI am a writer. Plotting is part of my business. Which makes me a plotter-writer. Only — just sometimes — I forget it isn’t other people’s business too and they Don’t Want To Know.

When I got my first flat, I would go home every three or four weeks for a weekend. It was my one big opportunity to communicate with my father, who thought the telephone was for emergencies. Even face to face he didn’t chat much. So, after my mother had gone to bed, we would end up watching a late-night movie on television in affectionate but largely silent companionship.

The Golden Gate Murders

Golden Gate Bridge, fog

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