Dr. Doyle's Editorial and Critique Services

thoughts on reading, writing, and editing

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Debra Doyle, PhD [30 November 1952-31 October 2020]

Debra Doyle, PhD [30 November 1952-31 October 2020]

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Debra Doyle, PhD [30 November 1952-31 October 2020]

Debra Doyle, PhD [30 November 1952-31 October 2020]

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Showing Our Colors

Under normal circumstances, I’m not a political animal. If there’s a gene for passionate political engagement, I don’t have it. I vote, I pay my taxes, I serve on a jury if I’m called, and I try to behave myself in public so as not to disturb the peace.

But these, as has been amply demonstrated, are not normal times, which is why our front yard currently looks like this:

There’s not…

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And So It Begins The first snowfall of Winter 2020.  At the time of this picture, the depth was 4 inches of heavy wet stuff.

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Pandemic Take-Out Road Trip

Pandemic Take-Out Road Trip

The cabin fever got strong in us this week, so today Jim Macdonald and I went on a six-hour-plus road trip to eat take-out food that didn’t come from our little town – just him and me and our masks in our comfy blue Subaru.

First we drove to North Conway, admiring the foliage all the way, starting at 9AM in order to reach Luchador Tacos not long after opening time.

We ate all by ourselves…

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Chew-Toys of the Mind

Chew-Toys of the Mind

So Jim Macdonald and I were sitting around the office this afternoon, and – as happens with writers – we fell to discussing Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, and how Hammett had managed to come up with one of the handful of infinitely reusable plots.  Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is one; likewise Chaucer’s “Pardoner’s Tale” and Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.  Plots like these, once their first…

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Turn, Turn, Turn

malkingrey | Recent Entries

  Autumn begins early, up here in far northern New Hampshire.

That’s the maple at the foot of our driveway, which is always one of the first trees in town to turn. We’re supposed to have night-time temperatures in the forties (Fahrenheit) all weekend.

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Albacon Afternoon

What we’re going to be doing Sunday afternoon:

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Reading

As in, like everybody else in these socially isolated days, I’m doing a lot of it.  Especially a lot of re-reading of old favorites in the mystery genre – probably because with an old favorite, you don’t get any unpleasant surprises.

Also probably because the best mysteries end up with truth revealed and justice done and good order restored – which makes them particularly comforting reads…

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Random Thought of the Day

Random Thought of the Day

If we threw every writer out of the canon who wasn’t, at least part of the time, a jerk and an asshole, we might be left with Jane Austen and the Venerable Bede. And I’m not completely sure about Jane.

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Shaking the Old Tambourine

Shaking the Old Tambourine

It’s paying-off-the-winter-electric-bill time (somewhat later than usual this year, thanks to the pandemic), and it’s also coming up on pay-the-town-property-tax time, so it behooves me to point discreetly to the Editorial and Critique Services link up at the top of this blog.

Short version: If you’ve got a book you think needs an editorial polish before you either self-publish it or send it…

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My New Favorite Movie

My New Favorite Movie

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One Thing They Could Do, Right Now. . .

One Thing They Could Do, Right Now. . .

. . . while they’re working on the complete replacement/restructuring of the entire US police system:

They could get rid of all the SWAT teams and other similar units out there.  Because the kind of incident that really requires a massively armed police response is fairly rare (to the point of being, most of the time, nonexistent) – but if you’ve got a dedicated unit meant for just that…

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It Really Shouldn't Be Necessary to Say This.

It Really Shouldn’t Be Necessary to Say This.

In a just and perfect world, it shouldn’t be necessary to point out that purposefully kneeling on someone’s neck until they’re dead is a bad thing, and that the person doing it is most emphatically not one of the world’s good people.

But this isn’t a just and perfect world, however much we would like it to be. So: Purposefully kneeling on someone’s neck until they’re dead is a bad thing, and…

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Comfort Food for Trying Times

Comfort Food for Trying Times

Or, it’s been a while since I posted a recipe.  My mother used to make this one; I don’t know whether it was Texas Depression-era family comfort food for her, or WWII Women’s Army Air Force food, but she would put it together for the family in a cast-iron skillet, possibly toward the end of a budgetary month (the key ingredients being shelf-stable, it’s a good recipe for that.)

Creamed Beef on…

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A Minor Seasonal Celebration

A Minor Seasonal Celebration

Hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray, the e-book royalties came today!

Not that they’re a huge amount, on a series that’s been out for quite some time now, but the twice-yearly ego massage is still good.

We’ll see what the fall royalties bring, because those are the ones that’ll show the quarantine effect.

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Peeve of the Day

Because pandemics make me peevish.

Listen to me, people.  “Dice” is not a singular noun.  It is a plural one, as in “a pair of dice” or “cut up your potato into small dice.”

The singular, as any long-time gamer knows, is “die”, as in “roll a twelve-sided die to check for damage.”

One die, two (or more) dice.  Get it?

Voice from the back row:  Got it.

Good.

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