AUTHORS HELPING AUTHORS I’d been published a little over a year, maybe two, when I first met Emily Wood. I’d been approached by a regional library to talk about writing and getting published. As I recall, it was loosely related to the now defunct National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) held each November. Anyway, Emily was […]
The Last Detail is the title of a short story, written by me and recently published by Brown Hound Press. A new online publisher, Brown Hound is a small press based in Lexington, Kentucky that publishes offbeat mystery, dark humor, southern gothic, and literary fiction. Brown Hound Press plans to publish one short story a […]
Do you know there’s a list of one-hit wonders on Wikipedia? It’s true, there is, and those one-hit wonders are even broken down by decade. Back in May 2025, Jay Hartman, Editor-in-Chief, White City Press emailed me with an invitation to submit a short story for Lunatic Fringe, a sequel to their anthology (I Just) […]
I first read about Helen Grier in September 2022, when my local online paper, the SooToday.com, ran a two-part article about her unsolved murder. As the author of two mystery series and seven novels, my first thought was “Here’s a possible idea for my next Marketville mystery.” (My Marketville mysteries are what I like to […]
I don’t have a huge bucket list of places I want to go or concerts I want to see. Part of the reason is that I tend to do things I want to do, if I can afford to do them. The other reason is I have few wants, and those that I do have […]
Every now and again I have what I call one of my “Agatha Christie Days”—and by that I don’t mean channeling my inner Hercule Poirot, but rather attempting to follow Dame Agatha’s sage advice, which is “to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.” […]
If I was the betting sort of writer, I’d place odds that most of our Stiletto Gang readers (and dare I say it, even the authors), don’t know what an Ngram is. If that’s the case with you, don’t feel bad. I’d never heard of them either until I listened to a webinar on writing […]
Last month, I wrote about Arabella Carpenter, owner of the Glass Dolphin antiques shop, and a main character in my Glass Dolphin mystery series. Arabella also makes brief, but important, appearance in each book of my Marketville Mystery series. Arabella has what could best be described as a complicated relationship with her charismatic ex-husband, Levon […]
I belong to four 9-hole golf leagues. You might think that makes me a good golfer, but the reality is, I’ll never be really good. Which isn’t altogether horrible. I’m good enough to play with fabulous golfers and not tick them off and bad enough not to intimidate new (or just plain not-so-great) golfers. Anyway, […]
Of all my characters (and there are quite a few), Glass Dolphin antiques shop owner Arabella Carpenter is probably my favorite. Feisty and flawed, she’s a loyal friend who still loves her ex-husband, Levon Larroquette (even if she refuses to admit it). But what I really like about her is her motto: Authenticity Matters. Because, […]