Blog – Page 4 – Scott Alumbaugh

“California”

May 13, 2012

Kevin Starr agrees with HH Bancroft that the name "California" comes from a 16th century Spanish novel. Indeed, after explaining...

California History

May 12, 2012

Last year I spent a lot of time researching California's El Camino Real. I was trying to discover the original...

Non-Fiction Westerns

I just finished œA Fate Worse Than Death, a book on Indian captivities in the 1800s. That is, white settlers (the authors did not cover Mexican captivities), primarily from Texas, taken as hostages by Native American raiders. The subject was interesting, but like a few other popular history books I™ve read, the writing was crappy.

Non-Fiction Westerns

Every animal has just enough brains to tan its hide

August 12, 2011

I™ll bet you didn™t know that. I didn™t either. I™ve been reading about Plains Indians, and more specifically, about Indian abductions of white settlers in the early- to mid-1800s.

Fiction

Process and Novel Writing

April 20, 2011

The process of writing a novel is daunting. There are probably as many means and systems as there are writers....

Novel Writing

Tropes and ClichÃ©s

April 13, 2011

As I stated earlier, I decided to make the protagonist of my first novel an amateur sleuth. As all other...

Novel Writing

Thoughts on Writing a First Novel

April 7, 2011

My friend Rick, who has been designing and building custom bikes for over 30 years, says that building a bike...

General

Steinbeck and Travels With Charlie

April 5, 2011

It turns out that Steinbeck™s purportedly nonfiction account of his tour of America circa 1962 in a camper, Travels With...

Fiction

Bullet in the Brain

March 30, 2011

Bullet in the Brain is a short story written by Tobias Wolff and originally published in New Yorker magazine in...

Fiction

Tolstoy on a Late Spring

March 23, 2011

"Spring was a long time unfolding. During the last weeks of Lent the weather was clear and frosty. In the...

General

Fiction is Dead

March 3, 2011

Well, maybe not dead. But according to Buce, picking up from Tyler at Marginal Revolution, it's on the skids. That...

General

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

January 7, 2011

My last post was about a flash fiction story I wrote that dealt with the atmosphere of tension in a...

General

Food, Sex, Danger

December 2, 2010

Susan Weinschenk is a psychologist with a book (Neuro Web Design: What makes them click?) and a website (What Makes Them Click). On the website, she is running a series of articles entitled œ100 Things You Should Know About People. As of this writing, she™s up to thing number 47: œPeople Value A Product More Highly If It Is Physically In Front Of Them.

Criticism

I Don™t Get John Grisham

November 27, 2010

I don™t get John Grisham. Never have, really. But I also never figured it was worth the effort. He writes crap that sells. (As one critic notes, his second novel, The Firm, œsold a bazillion copies. Not technically accurate, perhaps, but close enough.) I read a couple of his novels and didn™t see any reason to read more.

General

Signing Up

November 18, 2010

Part of the process of becoming a writer these days is signing up. Services abound. Resources are overwhelming. Many are free, unless you count the time you take to search, scan, read, save, post, forward, or archive them. All of them require at least a little time commitment. I signed up for two things today.

Criticism General

The Plan

November 17, 2010

Okay, so here's the writing plan. None of this is particularly original. But it is enough of a plan that it actually gives me a roadmap, something I need if I'm to make any progress at all. As to the plan itself . . .