If you're a fan of the mystery genre, you'll enjoy the writerly insights on these blogs.

Poe's Deadly Daughters

The Little Blog of Murder

Mysterious Musings

Type M for Murder

"What was it like, writing a book together?"

This is the second question people always ask — after "Are you identical twins?" — when we tell them that we recently finished Turning Tables, a novel based on our experiences waiting tables. That we wrote it while living on opposite coasts sparks the next question: "Wow, did you ever argue?"

Apparently, yes.  Continue reading...

If there's one word that captures the zeitgeist of our current economic downturn, it's subprime. The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Year for 2007, and as I described in my last column it is among the new entries in the latest updates of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. But it's a pretty odd word when you stop to think about it. The newly announced Merriam-Webster definition reads as follows: "having or being an interest rate that is higher than a prime rate and is extended especially to low-income borrowers." Wait a minute: a loan with a rate that is higher than prime is called sub-prime? How did that happen?  Continue reading...

Everybody knows about differences between American and British English like truck vs. lorry or elevator vs. lift. On her blog Separated by a Common Language, Lynne Murphy (an American linguist teaching in the UK) takes on subtler distinctions like proctor vs. invigilate or day care vs. crèche.

My company, Articulate Marketing, helps big tech companies communicate better about their products and services. A large part of my work is writing editorial-style content for websites. My credentials are my work for HP, Microsoft, eBay and others.

In the past couple of weeks, several people have asked me for advice about becoming a web copywriter, so here it is.  Continue reading...

Books to inspire young writers to tell their own stories.

The Young Writer's Companion

Writing Magic

What's Your Story?

Live Writing

Dictionary publishers don't get too many opportunities for creating PR buzz, but one surefire way of getting some attention is to announce the new words (and new senses of old words) that have been added in the latest update to a particular dictionary. In the past few days there have been new-word announcements for two major dictionaries, one in the US and one in the UK: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition) and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (also in its 11th edition, coincidentally enough). Let's take a look at what they're adding.  Continue reading...