I’ve confessed this to only a couple of people, but I’m now making it public: I failed a lie detector lie detector (polygraph) test. This happened in the early ’80s, when I was young and naïve—long before I began writing crime fiction. Back then, I believed lie detector tests were infallible. When I failed, I […]
When you hear the phrase “just one more thing,” what comes to mind? If you were around in the 1970s, you probably remember Columbo, starring Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo of the Los Angeles Police Department. The series won 22 awards and received 68 nominations, with Falk earning four Primetime Emmy Awards. It aired on […]
A Voice That Resonates If asked to name writers with a distinct voice, I could rattle off a list: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Karen Blixen, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, Harper Lee, Stephen King, John Irving, Anne Rice. Defining “voice,” however, is far more elusive. When I first started writing fiction, I went to a writers’ conference […]
The Anthropomorphizing of an Octopus I just finished reading Shelby Van Pelt’s delightful novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures. Van Pelt tells the story of an octopus named Marsellus who lived in an aquarium and befriended the elderly nighttime cleaning lady. Several chapters are written from Marcellus’ point of view. It is an excellent example of anthropomorphizing, the […]
Treasure Hunt: A True-Life Indiana Jones Saga When you hear the phrase treasure hunt, you might imagine a chest of gold or a legendary artifact. But what if the treasure was a bird—and the hunter an ornithologist? In the mid-1990s, I joined a field trip to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas coast to […]
Dead, but Not Forgotten: Murder at the Galvez When asked whether I use real people as inspiration for my stories, I tell folks that there are so many imaginary characters in my head vying for my attention that I don’t need inspiration from a real person. Except—there’s always an exception—right? When I started writing MURDER […]
From 2015 to 2020, I worked as the marketing director at Cave Art Press. One of my weekly tasks was writing a blog called Five-Minute Writing Tips, which eventually became the book Do You Have a CATHARSIS Handy? The book was orphaned when the company closed. Lately, I’ve been thinking about resurrecting both the blog […]
People often ask me where I get my ideas for my stories, or how I develop my characters, or if I outline my plots or make them up as I go along. But I’ve never been asked the question: “Why do you write?” The easy answer is I write to make people laugh and to […]
By Kathleen Kaska When I worked at Cave Art Press, a small publishing company in Anacortes, one of my tasks was to write the weekly blog posts. It had to address writing styles, grammar and punctuation rules, and the down and dirty of publishing and marketing—and it had to be funny. These blog posts eventually […]
Kathleen Kaska When was the last time you wrote a letter or received one? With texting, tweeting, emailing, and Facebook messaging available as popular (and expedient) forms of communication, people rarely write letters nowadays. Why bother, you might ask? I just order the book, Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship: The Correspondence of […]