Patricia Abbott (pattinase)

Some other site today talked about choosing the right name for characters. which reminded me of an issue I am constantly confronted with. Is...

All right, not on the whole first 50 pages. Just on Chapter Four-the protagonist's childhood. According to first reader, (also known as ...

Reading To Kill a Mockingbird for my bookgroup, I am reminded of the Pershings who lived on my street in the West Oak Lane section of Phill...

I have definitely left the short story range with the novel finally, having forty pages. (Or do I need to think in Ks instead of pages). It...

These is some of the crime fiction I was reading between 1989-92. I found the log cleaning up in the attic. This was during a period when I...

We're vulnerable in 2007. Not just the writers or actors or public figures out there, all of us. So much of what we have, think, or do ...

I am in one of those reading funks where I start books at a clip of several a day and reject them immediately. I won't name names becaus...

My writing group took a look at my synopsis for a possible Debut Dagger entry last night and voted it about a C+ I'd say. I showed them ...

There's a terrific interview with my daughter, Megan Abbott, on Behind the Black Mask - http://www.btbm.libsyn.com/ . The other intervie...

I admit I am stalling here. I am approaching the dreaded middle one hundred pages, and it scares me to death. I know what happens in that se...

Okay you crime/mystery writers out there. Answer this one: someone left a cherry pie on our back step this morning. It was in a Kroger's...

My husband and I decided to forgo the usual Valentine's Day gifts and instead buy a book of photographs. Our corner big name store is a ...

This may have been the first movie I've ever seen where the female lead was so pretty, it distracted me. Maybe I'm in the midst of a...

This was a terrific movie but I have one caveat. Why did the villain have to be so one-dimensional? And if he's going to be one dimensio...

For the last seven years I have been writing short stories. In these stories, I have learned to excise every unnecessary word. I try to keep...

I have agreed to be part of a group called movie bloggers. They found me due to the frequency of movie mentioning that goes on here. There i...

My husband and I have decided to collect vintatge crime paperbacks and picked up four this weekend-all under $3.50 and consequently not very...

Or in my case, not music. At my gym, and I use that word loosely, most of the rats like to exercise to 1) Fox News 2) ESPN 3) the Golf Chann...

Maureen Corrigan (Washington Post and NPR) has written a book about her life with books. Her father read compulsively, her mother not at all...

What movie are you likely to choose to cheer you up? With me, it's the movies of my childhood. In particular, it's Pillow Talk. Is P...