A few years ago, my husband retired from pathology and we moved to the land of eternal summer: Florida. We had scoped out many retirement communities and they were simply, to my much younger self, sad little places. I was not ready to retire to a rocking chair on the porch. Neither was he. We chose an over 55 community with 120,000 people and growing. The goal is 250,000 at the moment, but we may overtake Orlando at some point. It is often referred to as Disneyland for Grownups. You can do everything here: over 2,000 clubs from Scrabble to scuba, and every sport imaginable in addition to golf. There hundreds of Rec Centers with pools and workout equipment.  Hubs leads bicyclists on 45 mile a day ride and he is in the "slow club." There are eighty-year-olds riding at 20-28 miles per hour. There are rowing clubs, marathoners, triathletes, weightlifters, kayakers, and swimmers. There are many senior Olympians. There is dancing at the three town squares every evening, or ...

In the month of April Fools' Day, it seems like a good time to look at one of the characters we love to hate: The Con Man. He can appear in any genre. He can be the hero or the villain. The Con Man plot is most often used in Mystery or Thriller, but can be used in other genres. Cons can be conducted in person or via mail or the internet these days. There are successful swindlers and not so successful ones. Whether Dick is good at the game or laughable depends on your plot. Cons have been gaining people’s confidence since the population grew large enough to support snake oil salesmen. Let’s take an in-depth look at what makes a con tick. Dick the scammer is selfish and greedy. He isn’t lazy. Conning people takes a lot of energy and he is constantly in danger of getting caught. Traveling light and avoiding relationships is a good idea. Dick can be a charming predator. The most deadly scammer is a true sociopath. If you want to humanize him, give Dick a smidgen of conscience. ...

~ We are delighted to welcome historical mystery author Ann Parker to our blogging team. ~ When it comes to partners in fiction, there are all types, including love birds, best buds, and sidekicks of all kinds (for some great advice on sidekicks and how to develop them, check out Diana’s post from Feb. 1). Another flavor of fictional partner, which could overlap with the above in certain cases, could be termed the "frenemy." According to the Oxford English Dictionary , a frenemy is: "a person with whom one is friendly, despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry" or "a person who combines the characteristics of a friend and an enemy." I thought this was a very recent term, so imagine my surprise to find it dates from 1953 and was first coined by the newspaperman Walter Winchell in the Nevada State Journal in an article titled "Howz about calling the Russians our Frienemies?" (Oh, how I love to wallow around in the OED!) Frenemies can be fun...

Image by Rockandbacon , via Flickr Look at yourself right now. What are you wearing? Clothes of some sort, right? If the answer is ‘no’ well, that’s a post for a different time. However, let us assume that there is clothing of some type draped about your form. Work clothes. Stay at home clothes. I’m not feeling well and this is comfortable clothes. Gardening clothes. Cleaning out the garage clothes…you get the picture. Clothes are the outer signs of your role for the day or night. Sleeping? Baking? Making a court appearance? There are clothes for that. There are clothes which identify your work role. Nurse. Lab technician. Judge. Surgeon. Armed forces personnel. All clothes - not costumes. A costume isn’t your clothes. It’s something you have to get accustomed to wearing. It’s different. It could be awkward to wear; maybe it’s long or heavy. It might be something you wear on a special occasion. Whatever it might be, it’s unusual for you to be wearing it. You’re aware o...

I once read a free Kindle book that purported to be a novel about a woman who is kidnapped by some vaguely Middle Eastern ruffian and taken back to their homeland. There is she taken under the wing of a strong local woman who eventually helps her to return to her home. I know that there are very good books being self-published, but this one did not fit into that category. The oddly named characters (an Arab name that translated to “zucchini,” for example), the blatant stereotyping, and the clunky use of odd spelling and word order to denote a foreign language were distracting, but the book did not become laughable until the author attempted to portray the protagonist walking around in African/Middle Eastern garb. It was painfully obvious that the writer had no idea not only what the clothing should consist of, but what it would be like to move around and function in it on a daily basis. Being a Muslim woman who wears Islamic clothing when I go out, the deficiencies in the book ...

This top post of 2016 was first published on June 2nd. Your characters should be multi-faceted. They should have strengths and weaknesses. Wounds from life that haven't healed can supply internal conflict or motivate them to take on the overall story problem. However, if your character is so lacking in self-esteem that he is not equal to tackling the overall story problem or so sniveling or pathetic the reader can’t get behind him, it is a serious plot fail. If you decide to burden your characters with low self-esteem at least understand the why and how. Use the problem judiciously to motivate them, not from a standpoint of ignorance. Choose the degree of affliction carefully. As children grow up, there are several ways in which their self-esteem is damaged. 1. Healthy self-esteem requires competence. A child needs to feel self-confident and independent. If Dick, as a child, is not allowed to master things, to build self-confidence and independence, he becomes weak ...

To write, you need to focus. You can write anywhere - in a coffee shop, at your dining room table, on the train - but you need to concentrate on the words you’re putting on the screen or the page not on the world around you. You need - -   Question: What colour does a Smurf turn if you choke it? - - - to shut your mind to distractions. To immerse yourself in the world you are creating on the page. You must listen to your characters. Discover their rhythms. Their flaws. Their - -   Question: Why is the letter called ‘double u’ when its two ‘v’s joined together?  - - motivations. Every character is unique because so is every writer. We all crave different surroundings. Some write best while listening to music. Many require silence. Others write while surrounded by people, while a number crave solitude. But all writers - - -   Question: Why do we press harder on the tv remote when the batteries are dead?  - - - must develop discipline. You must b...

So many posts circulating on Facebook perpetuate stereotypes about men and women. They get a lot of likes and shares. They are funny on the surface and touch on shared experiences. But not every guy is into beer and cars and not every woman wants flowers and chocolates. Eliminating gender assumptions allows for a more interesting spectrum of characters to work with and can help send healthier messages. Traits such as introversion versus extraversion, sensing, feeling,thinking, and judging exist on a spectrum and transcend gender definitions. They are further shaped by our childhood wounds, nurturing (or lack of), and etched by society. There is a movement to change the messages we send girls about how they should manifest in the world, but the messages are still tainted by gender stereotypes. An equal amount of focus should be on the messages we send to boys about their presence in the world, without perpetuating unhealthy gender stereotypes. Tweet this:  As ...