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The Secrets We Carry Wins Two Reader Views Awards
Over the course of my 76-plus years on this planet, I’ve written thousands of compositions, ranging from elementary-school book reports to full-length novels. Some of these writings were not very good, and even those that were never received any recognition beyond a grade of A. That changed last Sunday when Reader Views notified me that…
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Bellaire Public Library Holds Author Festival in the Dead of Winter
Each summer for the past twelve years or so, my wife and I have taken children and grandchildren to Oglebay Park near Wheeling for several days of fun and leisure. Shortly before crossing the Ohio River, we pass an exit sign for Route 7 and Bellaire, Ohio. This past Saturday, Bellaire — not Oglebay Park…
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The Danger of Hyperbole
A few years ago, I wrote a blog, emphasizing how risky it was for writers to use “inflexible” words such as always, never, and certain. Such words, I argued, “anchor the writer or speaker to a fixed position from which there is no escape, no backtracking.” An inflexible word could be especially harmful if used…
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Help! My Book Has (Maybe) Been Pirated!
In most novels, right after the title page and before the first chapter, you’ll find the following statement or something similar to it: All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, now known or hereafter invented, or stored in a database without…
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Christmas, In a Word
Three years ago, I wrote a blog that explained how Xmas — contrary to the belief of a local pastor — was not an attempt to eliminate “Christ” from Christmas. Rather, the X was an abbreviated reference to Jesus. I noted that in Greek (the language used in the New Testament) the word for Christ…
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Words of Victory
It’s over. The Ohio State football team’s painful losing streak to Michigan ended at four games last Saturday with the Buckeyes posting a 27-9 victory in Ann Arbor. In celebration of that happy event, this blog will analyze the meanings of four words associated with victory, starting with victory itself followed by triumph, conquest, and…
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When No Words Are Needed
When she was about six or seven years old, my daughter Rachel needed her tonsils removed. Her mother and I took her to Columbus Children’s Hospital (now Nationwide Children’s Hospital) for the surgery and the overnight stay that followed. Not long after Rachel had been taken to her room, I went back to our car…
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Bookstore Signings Offer New Opportunities for Sales
If you are a not-well-known author (like me), you need to be alert to new venues through which you can promote and sell your books. Book fairs and festivals are perhaps the most common way non-famous authors can get their books sold. I’ve now been to no fewer than 10 book fairs or festivals. But…
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Books Fairs in Logan and Dover Bring Different Results
According to Forrest Gump’s mother, “life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” Mrs. Gump could also have been talking about book fairs. You can’t be sure what will happen before you arrive there. Having now been to nine book fairs, I know how different one can be from…
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A Fried Chicken Story by Lynette Grace
Not many people know me personally enough to realize this, so I divulge a secret in telling you this story. I don’t mind it, there is no shame in my game. The truth is, I have a thing for hot, fried, golden brown chicken sold in the deli department of my neighborhood grocery store. It’s…
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Team of Rivals: A Review — Part II
Part II of Team of Rivals – “Master Among Men” — provides an extensive analysis of Lincoln’s wartime leadership as well as the relationships he had to sustain and nurture in order to be a successful leader. At the outset of his administration, Lincoln had to make a difficult choice over whether to evacuate Fort…
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Team of Rivals: A Review — Part I
Since elementary school, I’ve probably written close to 100 book reports and book reviews, covering a wide range of genres (though not erotica). My review of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals (Simon & Schuster, 2005), however, is the first one that will be done in two parts. That’s partly because of the book’s length…
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A Visit to Bookingham Forest
(With my website under construction until very recently, I didn’t have time to write a new blog for the first half of August. But this earlier piece, written for my 2016 Otterbein creative writing class, is both fun and bittersweet, since both Naomi and Alek are now too old for story time at Bookingham Forest.)…
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A Second Look at Synonyms — Part II
In my last post, I focused on words that are considered synonyms even though they have slightly different meanings. Subtle but potentially important differences were noted between recall, remember, and recollect as well as between jealousy and envy. In this post, we’ll focus on three more sets of synonyms where the words don’t quite have…
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A Second Look at Synonyms — Part I
In elementary school, we learn that synonyms are two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses. True enough, although in fact, there are very few synonyms that have exactly the same meaning. There are usually slight differences in the…
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My Interview with Lancelot
Having taught public speaking for over 20 years, I feel pretty confident expressing myself in front of a live audience. But I felt a tremor of nervousness when Brooklyn-based author and blogger Lancelot Schaubert offered to interview me in front of an online audience. For one thing, I wouldn’t see this audience, wouldn’t know how…
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Book Fairs at Newark and Lithopolis Bring More Sales
The “bold beginning” taken at the launching of The Secrets We Carry: Journal of a Girl in Trouble last month was just that — a beginning. And unless follow-up initiatives occurred in the wake of that beginning, the potential impact of my novel would diminish rapidly. Fortunately, two events have helped me maintain the momentum:…
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“Bold Beginning” Taken with Book Launch
“Be favorable to bold beginnings,” a wise man (Ben Franklin, I think) once said. On May 10, I took a “bold beginning” with the launch of my YA novel, The Secrets We Carry: Journal of a Girl in Trouble. The book had actually been on the market since the end of March, but this “launch”…
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Summarizing My YA Novel
As I look over my previous blog, which focused on five guidelines to follow when summarizing a piece of writing, it occurs to me that it may be simpler to summarize another writer’s composition than your own. For one thing, you can’t avoid using the author’s words in your summary, since you are the author.…
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The Keys to Making a Good Summary
Several days ago, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) made political history by speaking over 25 hours on the Senate floor, falling silent only briefly to take sips of water from a bottle. As a writer and former public speaking instructor, I considered a question that probably few others considered: How would you summarize his speech? Emily…
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My 10 Favorite Books Revisited
One of my earliest blogs dealt with my 10 favorite books. With so much of my time being taken up now by preparations for my May 10 book launch, I’ve decided to save time by re-posting that blog rather than writing a new one. I will make a few new observations at the conclusion. MY…
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The Galleys: The Final Frontier
A book headed toward publication will go through many stages starting with the prewriting, to the writing of drafts, to proofing, and then to submitting the final draft to an agent or publisher. If you are self-publishing, the process may end there, but if you are working with a small press or a traditional press,…
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Affect/Effect and Other Commonly Confused Word Pairs — Part III
It wouldn’t be too difficult to write a blog exclusively on the confusion that often arises over whether to use affect or effect in a sentence. But before taking on that challenge, let’s look at two other word pairs that are sometimes confused. Device and Devise Device is a noun that typically refers to a machine,…
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Commonly Confused Word Pairs: Part II
One of my December blog posts focused on three pairs of commonly confused words. There is almost no limit to such word pairs in the English language, but here are four more to consider. Envelop and Envelope Envelop is a verb that means “to completely enclose or surround someone or something,” as in “she enveloped the…
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A Review of The Long Walk by Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
In my years as a participant in long-distance runs, I only dropped out of one race. That was the 1983 Columbus Marathon when grinding pain in my knees forced me to quit near the 20th mile. Had I been one of the boys in Stephen King’s The Long Walk, I wouldn’t have had the option…
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My 2025 Writing Goals
In my last blog, I clarified the difference between resolutions, goals, and wishes. I prefer making goals, since they have verifiable/measurable outcomes that I have the ability to achieve. I set goals in all areas of my life — health and fitness, home improvement, family support, and of course writing. Since my blog is writing…
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Wishes, Resolutions, and Goals, Oh My!
The arrival of a new year is typically an occasion for making a commitment to improve and/or renew oneself. This commitment often takes the form of one or more “resolutions.” The meaning of a “resolution” depends on the context. In government circles, it refers to a formal expression of opinion, will, or intent voted on…
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Commonly Confused Word Pairs: Part I
English is a tricky language. There are a multitude of word pairs that are similar in spelling but don’t have quite the same meaning. There are also cases where two words are spelled differently, but one is often used when the other word is the one that conveys the appropriate meaning. We’ll look at three…
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Nicknames: When to Use and Not Use Them
In the wake of their decisive win over Indiana, the Ohio State Buckeyes will be a strong favorite to win their game against the University of Michigan next Saturday. Now, if you are like most OSU fans, you probably would criticize me for not calling Michigan “That Team Up North” or “TTUN.” Later, I’ll explain…
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Books & Brews Highlights Community’s Friendship with Library
“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship,” declared Thomas Aquinas some 800 years ago. His words ring true not only for individuals but also for public institutions, such as libraries. That’s why the Friends Foundation of Worthington Libraries has such an important role to play. The financial support the…
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A Review of The Female of the Species
It’s a fact that males are more prone to violence than females. Indeed, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, males account for 78.9 percent of the violent crimes committed in this country. But if nearly 80 percent of violent crimes are committed by males, around 20 percent are committed by females, which prompts one…
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American Writers Museum Lives up to my Hopes
I recall as a child being totally awestruck by two museums my family visited. One was the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. The other was Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. The latter with its interactive exhibits, true-to-life coal mine, and World War II German submarine dazzled my young mind and showed me just how…
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Vote 2024: The Language of Political Signs
The 2024 Presidential Election is only 44 days away, so it’s not surprising that political signs are sprouting up on lawns and in windows at an increasing rate. Given the limited space available on a political sign, the words it displays have to be cleverly chosen. Granted, a sign may have nothing more than the…
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In Pursuit of a Publisher
Many of you know that I’ve been working on a YA novel (my third) for the last four years, and now a milestone in that project has been reached. I need to find a publisher. Reaching this milestone has been neither quick nor easy. Diary of a Girl in Trouble has been through no fewer…
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More on Metaphors
Since writing my first blog on metaphors two weeks ago, I’ve learned a lot more about them. The English word “metaphor” comes from the Greek word μεταφο (metaphorá), meaning a transfer of ownership. That’s what a metaphor does. It transfers the characteristics of one word to another, so they both own the same meaning. There are actually…
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Metaphors: Helpful But Use with Caution
The popular musical The Fantasticks revolves around a boy meets girl-next- door romance that receives some subtle encouragement from the respective fathers. In one particular song, the boy, Matt, expresses his love for the girl Lucinda, in a series of vivid metaphors. Imagining himself on a desert, he describes her as “cool clear water” for…
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Is it Okay to Break the “Rules of Grammar”?
“Rules are meant to be broken.” The person who makes that statement usually intends to break some rules or has already done so. But rules, in whatever context they occur, were created for a purpose and breaking them will likely carry consequences that the rulebreaker may regret. The same holds true with the rules of…
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In Defense of Adverbs
When it comes to the “Parts of Speech” family, the adverb is the red-headed stepchild, the runt of the litter. “The road to hell is paved with adverbs,” declares no less a writer than Stephen King. “To put it another way,” King continues, adverbs “are like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it…
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Letting Acronyms and Abbreviations Work for You
A letter I sent to my friends Frank, a scuba diving instructor, and Terry, a radar engineer, came back to me because I didn’t have the right zip code. You may not know it, but the sentence above has three acronyms in it, specifically SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), RADAR (radio detection and ranging), and…
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Pre-Publication Questions
Within the next six weeks, I plan to send a finished draft of Diary of a Girl in Trouble to as many as a dozen publishers. And then wait for the rejections. Well, maybe not from all of them. At least that is my hope. But I have enough experience with the publication process to…
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Beta Readers Offer Helpful Revisions
Beta readers play a key role in the writing-publishing process. As their name suggests, they aren’t the first ones to see a draft manuscript. Alpha readers see the first draft as it is being written and offer feedback on clarity, character development, and plot continuity, and how the composition reads as a whole. Beta readers…
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Poems by Linda
Ever since I took up writing as a serious hobby some 20 years ago, I have devoted far more time and effort to prose than poetry. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy poetry. Many poems, especially those written by the romantics, can stir my emotions and send my thoughts soaring back into a blissful…
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Avoiding Excessive Repetition of Words
My dissertation, completed over 40 years ago, dealt with the antislavery movement in Ohio. Not surprisingly, various forms of the word “slavery” appeared frequently throughout my composition. Besides slaves themselves, there were slave laws, slave states, and slaveholders as well as debates on slavery, petitions on slavery, slavery supporters, and slavery opponents. Then, of course,…
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The Last Laugh: A Review
In The Last Laugh (Katherine Tegen Books, 2022), Mindy McGinnis answers the questions left open at the end of The Initial Insult and reveals a different — and often negative — side of the characters who appeared in the first book of her duology. Three storylines form the core of The Last Laugh. First is…
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New YA Novel Nears Completion
During my 28 years at the Ohio Department of Education, I spent a great deal of time at State Board of Education meetings. One of the Board’s primary responsibilities was (and still is) to revoke the licenses of educators who, because of criminal or otherwise inappropriate behavior, were deemed unfit to work in a school…
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Avoiding and Correcting Awkward Sentences — Part III
When she was little and did something naughty, my daughter Rachel would say “Daddy, are you angry to me?” I would scowl and respond, “No, I’m angry with you.” Rachel the child — she’d never make that mistake now — used the wrong preposition when asking her question. Both experienced and novice writers often make…
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Avoiding and Correcting Awkward Sentences — Part II
There is rarely anything funny that results when the rules of grammar are violated. In fact, such violations have probably driven more than a few English teachers to tears and thoughts of early retirement. But there can be exceptions. Consider the following examples. Constructed out of solid oak and iron bolts, the soldiers could not…
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Avoiding and Correcting Awkward Sentences — Part I
What exactly is an awkward sentence? Definitions may vary, but it’s safe to say that an awkward sentence is one that lacks balance, clarity, and/or meaning due to poor word choice, poor structure, missing transitions, or some similar deficiency in the way it is composed. In some cases, the “awkwardness” is fairly easy to correct. In…
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A Review of The Initial Insult
There are YA authors who hesitate to offend readers by showing them the ugly side of high school life, who shy away from the wrenching, painful issues facing today’s teenagers. Mindy McGinnis is, without doubt, NOT one of these writers. Ms. McGinnis confronts these issues and seizes them in a way that is compelling and…
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2023 Holiday Favorites
A couple of weeks ago, when I saw that my next blog posting would fall on December 24, I decided to do something different. Rather than write some dull (and probably overlooked) piece on grammar and/or punctuation, I would list the favorite holiday stories. movies, and books of my family and friends. In the end,…
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Have a Capital Christmas
When we think of Christmas and all the lovely things that come with it, we definitely do not think about the rules for punctuation and capitalization. Just the same, the holiday season in general and Christmas in particular provide an opportunity to consider when capital letters, italics, and quotation marks should be used when referring…
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The Great Gatsby: Why It’s a Great Novel
Any list of the 10 best American novels is certain to include The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story of a handsome social climber, who pursues a married woman while suspicions swirl around both his profession and his pedigree. I probably should have read this classic long ago, but only finished it within the last…
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River Cruise Impressions
The difference between the Scioto River and the St. Lawrence River is almost as great as the difference between Worthington’s Antrim Lake and the Atlantic Ocean. Similarly, my canoe experience with my father on the Scioto described in my last post was a world apart from the cruise I recently took with my wife on…
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Scioto River Canoe Trip
At first, there might not appear to be much similarity between the rather small Scioto River, which flows through central Ohio to the Ohio River, and the massive St. Lawrence River that rushes between Canada and the United States before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. But at different times, journeys on these rivers brought adventure…
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A Visit to Bookingham Forest
Note: I was in Long Island for much of the weekend and didn’t have time to put together a fresh posting for this blog. So here is a story I wrote several years ago about taking my grandchildren to Worthington Library’s “Bookingham Forest.” Going to Bookingham Forest is an adventure that begins even before we…
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Tips on Keeping a Diary or Journal
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to read through a diary kept by my grandmother’s aunt (my great grand aunt, I suppose). The diary covered a period of about five years from 1915 to 1920. I relished the chance to review it, believing it would provide this woman’s thoughts and feelings about World War…
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That’s a Capital Idea (Part IV)
Reading history has always been one of my favorite hobbies since my parents gave me the American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War as a Christmas gift some 60 years ago. Maybe because I have read more history books than the average person, I know that major historical events should be capitalized. That’s also…
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That’s a Capital Idea (Part III)
When it comes to capitalization, there are few words that cause more confusion than school subjects. Such words are usually lowercased, unless the subjects themselves are proper nouns. That’s the case with any language that is being studied: French, English, German, Spanish. It also applies to an area of study that focuses on a particular…
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Columbus Book Festival Provides Multiple Outlets for Creativity and Learning
Let’s take a break from rules on capitalization and focus on a recent literary event in central Ohio that apparently made quite an impact. The Columbus Book Festival took place on July 15 and 16 inside the main Columbus Metropolitan Library, and in the plaza and topiary garden east of the library. I have been…
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That’s a Capital Idea (Part II)
Consider the following paragraph. I have a friend who has always wanted to visit the Pacific Northwest. So I invited him to my home in the southern part of Oregon. Once he arrived, we took my car and drove 30 miles west to Gold Beach. We tried to find a restaurant there that served high-quality…
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That’s a Capital Idea! (Part I)
To capitalize or not to capitalize — that is the question. Many people (especially students) seem to feel that by capitalizing a word, they give it more importance. However, there are a number of rules that determine when a word should be capitalized, and most have nothing to do with the word’s importance relative to…
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Canal Town Book Festival Makes for a Good Weekend
Dover is a small town located about 65 miles south of Cleveland along the Tuscarawas River. Once a key point on the Ohio and Erie Canal, Dover hosted the Canal Town Book Festival this past Saturday. I was fortunate enough to be among the 30 authors who were featured at this event, which took place…