By Kay Kendall Many anniversaries in the last few weeks remind us of the wretched world wars that ripped apart the twentieth century. Right off the top of my head, here are three important dates: * June 6, 2014—70th anniversary of D-Day. * June 28, 2014—100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, precipitating […]
By Kay Kendall Once upon a time the image of a writer was someone who sits in a quiet room all day long and scribbles, or types away like a maniac. The key point is that writers were seen as introverts. Even at the beginning of this new century, that seemed to be the stereotype. […]
By Kay Kendall Tomorrow I fly north to attend the Canadian mystery conference named Bloody Words. Location: Toronto. This is something akin to poetic justice. Not only is this my first Canadian writers and fan conference but also Toronto is the setting for my debut mystery. Yes, Toronto. New writers are often advised to “write […]
By Kay Kendall I don’t give a fig how a car works. Or electricity. Or a computer. They all might as well be black boxes, as far as I’m concerned. Inside mysterious things happen. Poof! The car turns on. Poof! Electricity powers the air conditioner. Poof! The computer recalls everything you write. What I do […]
By Kay Kendall When I was growing up during the “Leave It to Beaver” era, as a young baby boomer I noticed many anomalies, things that made no sense to me. Off the top of my head, here’s a list of these things that happened for which I had no explanation: *Grown women suffered wordlessly […]
by Kay Kendall In my head these days, I’m living in 1969. I call up memories from that time period—yes, I was a sentient being back then—as I write my W.I.P. (work in progress), a historical mystery. I call my books “historical” because, even if it’s a time period some of us can remember, that […]
By Kay Kendall Earlier this week I was brainstorming with my manager (AKA my husband) about topics for my next piece here on the Stiletto Blog. “Eureka,” he said. “Today on the radio I heard about a woman who’s charged with murdering her lover using her stiletto. At first I figured it meant a stiletto […]
By Kay Kendall I write historical murder mysteries, and my chosen time period is the turbulent era of the 1960s. My work in progress is set in 1969, entitled Rainy Day Women. This time my amateur sleuth, Austin Starr, gets drawn into a murder investigation when her best friend, Larissa Klimenko, is suspected of killing […]
By Kay Kendall The lure of historic catastrophe hit when I was eight. On the movie screen a small American town celebrated the return of victorious soldiers from World War I. How exciting it must’ve been to live during real wartime, I thought. Even at that tender age I knew America was engaged in a […]
By Kay Kendall Gloria Steinem said it best: “Writing is the only thing I do that I don’t feel like I should be doing something else.” I began writing fiction fifteen years ago. My first manuscript was a literary novel that I worked on forever and put aside when I failed to get an agent. […]