Posts by LesleyADiehl
Support for Other Authors
It’s summer, time for annual community yard sales. If you are familiar with my Eve Apple mysteries you know I created a protagonist who is as passionate about used items as I am. Eve is the owner of a consignment shop but likes solving murders almost as much as she likes selling used merchandise. Yesterday…
Read MoreWho would eat this?
Doesn’t this salad look yummy? It’s made of walnuts, dried cranberries, grilled chicken breast, fresh lettuce from my garden, cucumbers and apples with lite Vidalia onion dressing. I had it for lunch on July 4. Many of you know that I write a lot about food in my cozy mysteries. Like me, my protagonists like…
Read MoreAnother way of keeping cool
Many of us in the nation are in for a hot July Fourth holiday with temperatures soaring into the nineties and even higher. People here in Upstate New York usually don’t have air conditioning. We’ve never needed it, but with the summers getting hotter, we installed AC in our cottage several years ago and have…
Read MoreBlooming Once More
Like those writers who have also abandoned their blogs for a number of weeks, I must apologize for disappointing those of you who read it and find it interesting. I have not held up my end of the deal, but now things have changed in my life, and I’m looking forward to the future and…
Read MoreThe women in my writing
A question often asked writers is “Where do you get your ideas?” Usually that means where did the writer get the idea for a plot, but it also can refer to a character. The inspiration for plots and character emerge from both the writer’s creativity and from experience. Both fantasy and reality can shape what…
Read MorePolitical Dirty Trick: Suspense by James R. Callan
James R. Callan, one of my favorite writers and a writer friend releases Political Dirty Trick, a mystery/suspense set in Texas with Crystal Moore as the protagonist in a deadly game set up to spread lies about a political candidate. I was delighted to be one of the book’s beta readers. Jim is one of the few male…
Read MoreUsing juxtaposition in your work
Decades ago, in another century, I completed my doctorate with a research project on curiosity motivation in preschoolers. I was particularly interested in one theory of curiosity motivation that had been tested with animals, but not with humans. The theory postulated that curiosity was a function of several stimulus variables including novelty, complexity, change and…
Read More“Older than dirt”
I have a birthday soon, too soon. It’s tomorrow. I won’t share with you how old I am, but I recently took a twenty-question quiz on Facebook. It was comprised of items from the past. If you remembered all 20 of them, then you were “older than dirt.” I was “older than dirt.” Each year…
Read MoreDo I still write cozy mysteries?
My book blog tour for Killer Tied wrapped up this week. While I was busy on the tour, writers on one of one of my online digests talked about the make up of cozies. Their comments made me think about my Eve Appel mysteries, which I consider a cozy mystery series. Like other cozies, I…
Read MoreAnnual Event at the Okeechobee Library
Yesterday I did my annual event at the Okeechobee Library welcomed again by the staff in the library and some of my local fans. In the above picture I’m joined by my good friend, Jan Day, writer, my former critique partner and co-founder with me of the Okeechobee Writers League (on left) and, on…
Read More