Pen, Spoon & Dagger

Today, July 18 th , is National Caviar Day.   Who knew?    June is also National Candy Month, National Dairy Month, National Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Month, National Iced Tea Month, and National Papaya Month.   Who knew? Or cares? Personally I think caviar is vile – probably a result of my brother telling me, in vivid detail, what it was when I had a large mouthful at age 7.   Mother was not amused when I spit it out. And, I’ve never touched the stuff again.   This is a bit of information none you are interested in, with good reason.   But what about the other sound bites we snatch every day? As a writer, I love sites that list trivia, and that includes the “today in history” pages.    How else would I know that on July 18 th , 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor aboard the French ship Isere , or that on this day in 1991, the remains of President Zachary Taylor were briefly exhumed to test a theory that Taylor had d...

Current word count:  3,791. Now that I've got my protagonist down on paper, I need to flesh out the secondary characters.  These are the people Kensing will interact with on a day-to-day basis; turn to for help, advice or a shoulder to cry on. Kensing is a neophyte caterer.  This means she'll need help not only with catering knowledge, but also with legal/police matters in order to solve the mysteries she'll face.  And, of course, we need a potential love interest.  What's life without love? To that end, she is going to meet her future business partner, Abby, early in the first book.  At the same time, she will be meeting her second partner, AnneLise, a French woman who just happens to be married to the local District Attorney.    Love interest?  How about a handsome, unattached police captain?  Maybe several years older than Kensing, but still young enough to give her a run for her money.  Friction between the two can gradually sh...

The critical aspect of any book, plot aside, is the characters.  For a book to succeed, its characters must be either a) likeable, b) memorable, or c) both. Not only is the character's personality important, but also his or her name.  Take the obvious Hannibal Lecter.  Not a particularly likeable character, but definitely memorable.  Read The Silence of the Lambs and you will never forget him.  Thomas Harris could have, I suppose, named his character John Davis, but would that have had the same effect? Hannibal rhymes with cannibal; Hannibal was also a fierce warrior.  Lecter?  Say it out loud.  It has a clean, slashing sound.  On another level, maybe we want to equate it to the church lector, the person who delivers the word of….Hannibal? Harris' second character is Clarice Starling.  Clarice is a fantasy name, one a writer might give to a fairy princess, yet it derives from the Latin claritia or fame.  It can also mean illustrio...