Tag: family
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Unanswerable questions
Family still haunts my thoughts and my writing – division, dysfunction, lack of communication, the many elephants in the room. And as we say farewell to yet another family elder, the questions continue to pile up: And what questions remain for those few elders still with us – that we should ask now, before it’s…
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What I’m reading: Daisy Darker
My biggest (only?) regret at writing mysteries – and reading/watching so many of them, is that it’s really hard to find one that surprises me. Usually I’ve got the plot (mostly) figured out and the villain nailed long before the big reveal. Not so with Alice Feeney’s Daisy Darker…boy, did this one keep me guessing!…
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Boys of Summer*
My next stop in exploring the theme of family in my novels (namely the broken, dysfunctional, non-traditional ones) is more light-hearted: baseball! And since most pitchers and catchers report this week, spring is just around the corner. All three books in my “Toledo Trilogy” take my MCs out to the ballgame – namely, to see…
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Twisted family ties
Next in my journey through the theme of family (namely the broken, dysfunctional, non-traditional ones) in my novels is adoption. Unwelcome Ties, the third book in my “Toledo Trilogy,” is actually a prequel to the first two, and the first novel I ever finished. It started in NaNoWriMo 2005, was heavily rewritten as my master’s…
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What I’m reading: Scot on the Rocks
Scot on the Rocks, #3 in Catriona McPherson’s A Last Ditch mystery series, tackles some weird family dynamics, too (see my earlier posts on my novels’ theme of family), but with more laughs than I can manage. As I always told my students, writing humor well is tough! McPherson has that knack in spades, and…
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Adult sibling rivalry or BFFs?
Next up in my exploration of the theme of family in my novels (namely the broken, dysfunctional, non-traditional ones) is sibling rivalry. In Forty & Out, I introduced Jadz’s older sister Betty, who nurses an inexplicable grudge against Jadz. No matter how much Jadz does to bail out her once-close sib, Betty takes it as…