A traditional component of classical beauty is symmetry. Think about the roman arches, the Eiffel Tower, or the face of Audrey Hepburn. All of these have symmet...
I struggled while writing this blog, because for the first time since I started this series, I really didn’t like the book. I wanted to love it, really. T...
When you think of great first lines, your mind probably recalls Austin’s “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good ...
Spoiler Alert: This article will use some sentences from the last page of the novel. While this won’t tell you how things happen, it will reveal the final...
A common piece of advice when writing is to hook or grab your reader’s attention immediately in your first chapter, or first page. Many writers interpret ...
I have mixed feelings about novels written from the first person point of view. It seems 90 percent of the books I read these days use first person. Sure, it ad...
When I started reading Julie and Romeo by Jeanne Ray, I planned to discuss retellings as a fun approach to plotting a novel. The novel plays with Romeo and Juli...
I like quirky things. Quirky books, quirky songs, quirky rings, quirky people, the word quirky. I was into Star Trek way before it was cool to be a nerd (just a...
Sometimes, you pick up the right book at the right time, almost as if an angel set it atop the to-read pile as a special message just for you. So, dear reader, ...
Before diving in, a bit of housekeeping. I don’t intend for these columns to serve as reviews, though in this case, I do highly recommend all of Cassandra...
For those of you still reading this little blog, even with my inconsistent posting, yay for me (and you). I’ve decided to make some changes for the short ...
