Questioning Orthodoxy (with a small “o”)

Topic Prompt: Do you think Shakespeare existed? Or are there just to many plays and sonnets credited to him to be the work of one person? The new film Anonymous questions his prolificity and his existence. If you think these claims against history are a waste of time, why do you think they are periodically [...]

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Post-a-Day: So Create, Already

“Have you ever considered writing a book? If so what would it be about? Make a list of the ideas you want to cover, or the themes it might have. If you’ve never considered writing a book, what other major work have you thought about (a movie? a symphony?). Write a paragraph or two about [...]

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PostAday: Procrastination, That’s Me

“What’s the most important thing you’re putting off?  And why haven’t you done it yet?  What do you need to make it happen?” I was brought up to believe that procrastination was right up there with idle hands, as in, “The devil makes work for idle hands to do.”  The procrastination version of this saying [...]

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The Lady or the Tiger?

I have a problem:  I’ve decided that for my fourth novel, one of my characters has to go.  I’m not sure if it should be my hero or my heroine — at the moment, I’m leaning towards my hero — but it seems to be the only way I can bring their story up to [...]

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:D

Well, it’s really frustrating not to be able to copy the image into WordPress, but — I have “completed” my third novel, second draft.  It has huge holes in it, but there is a beginning, a middle, and an end, and — more importantly for me — I did it in a month. Thanks to [...]

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Bite the Bullet

I’ve done it:  I’ve joined National Novel Writing Month. =:0    This evil suggestion came to me from Elizabeth, over at The Garden Window, who is also dipping into the world of temporary insanity known as novel-writing.  In this case, it may lead to permanent insanity, since the idea is to write a 50,000-word novel in [...]

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15 Books

Cribbed from Philippa’s blog: The rules:  Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.   This list is in no particular order. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy The Deliverance of Sister Cecilia, as told to [...]

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A Writer’s Life

I think most readers of this blog know that among other things, I write novels.  They started out, 30 years ago, as a way for me to explore Russian culture and to combine my own (sketchy) Russian heritage with something very dear to my heart at the time:  federal law enforcement, which I had just [...]

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Affirmation!

I have mentioned in a number of places that my current favorite TV show is NCIS, which is on on Tuesday evenings. The medical details of autopsy gross me out, but I absolutely love the interplay among all the characters, especially the Mark Harmon and David McCallum characters (i.e., my generation) with their four much [...]

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Possession

Not demonic. I hope. This past week, I was bitten rather badly by the writing bug. About 15 years ago, I wrote two books, back to back, about a KGB officer who became an Orthodox Christian. I haven’t especially tried to market them, because I sensed that I really didn’t know enough about Orthodoxy to [...]

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