Month: January 2015

By Gale Albright

In crime fiction, women traditionally have taken on roles of helpmeet/spouse or devil temptress. It’s the old good girl/bad girl, Madonna/whore dichotomy so prevalent in literature, movies, and television. A great example of this dichotomy appears in the classic noir film, The Maltese Falcon.

Mary Astor is the seductive, murdering femme fatale, Bridget O’Shaughnessy. Lee Patrick plays Sam Spade’s girl Friday, Effie Perrine. She is obviously devoted to him, is on call to do his bidding 24/7 and lives with her mother. He never notices her except to say things like “You’re a good man, sister.” He plays around with Iva Archer, his partner’s wife. She is not on screen long, but she makes it count. When Miles is murdered, she forces her way into Sam’s office, draped head to toe in stylish black, somehow looking sexy, and asks Sam if he killed Miles because he…

Don’t get rid of your old, wooden rocking chairs! Gussy ’em up like a piano!

Texas Blues by Karen Abrahams

Piano keys

Play it, Sam.

Monday Up Close

Italiano: Pomodoro grinzoso (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a post that appeared here last fall, Austin Mystery Writer Laura Oles asked the burning question,

Can a technique named after a tomato serve as the answer to your time management woes?

Or, more specifically, what does the writer do when it’s impossible to devote a large block of time–several consecutive hours, at least–to writing?

Laura answered the question with a resounding Yes! and went on to describe her success using the Pomodoro Technique, which involves working in 25-minute blocks of time.

After reading her post, I put a Pomodoro on my toolbar. I like it. It helps me log my time, a necessary evil for professional writers, and gives me a feeling of accomplishment.

But my schedule isn’t demanding. I often feel I’m running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to just get through the day, but really–I…

Posted by Kathy Waller

January 1 has come and gone, and here I sit with no long list of resolutions.

I swore off those things several years ago. They were always the same: lose X pounds, start every task early instead of late, keep a tidy house–I couldn’t say tidier, because it wasn’t tidy in the first place–sit less, move more, lose X pounds. And by the end of the January, I’d have broken them all, some because of my wicked, rebellious nature, and some because I forgot I’d made them.

Then I read these sentences by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman:

 We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not…

― Neil Gaiman