Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer

The Story of English in 100 Words by David Crystal

More Forensics and Fiction: Crime Writers' Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answered  by D.P. Lyle, M.D.

The Travel Writer's Handbook: How to Write - and Sell - Your Own Travel Experiences by Jacqueline Harmon Butler and Louise Purwin Zobel

Moving On: From Short Story to Novel a Step-by-Step Guide by Della Galton

Introduction
by Jonah Lehrer

Procter and Gamble had a problem: it needed a new floor cleaner. In the 1980s, the company had pioneered one lucrative consumer product after another, from pull-up diapers to anti-dandruff shampoo. It had developed color-safe detergent and designed a quilted paper towel that could absorb 85 percent more liquid than other paper towels. These innovations weren’t lucky accidents: Procter and Gamble was deeply invested in research and development. At the time, the corporation had more scientists on staff than any other company in the world, more PhDs than the faculties of MIT, UC-Berkeley, and Harvard combined.

And yet, despite the best efforts of the chemists in the household-cleaning division, there were no new floor products in the pipeline. The company was still selling the same lemon-scented detergents and cloth mops; consumers were still sweeping up their kitchens using wooden brooms and metal dustpans. The reason for this creative failure was simple: it was extremely difficult to make a stronger floor cleaner that didn’t also damage the floor. (Continue reading here.)

A moment of arrival (20th century)

Is it ever possible to say exactly when a word was invented? Yes, if someone keeps a record. But more often we find new words known by the date the public got to know about them.

In 1906, the Huebsch company published a book by the American humorist Gelette Burgess, which sold very well. The next year, at a publishing trade association dinner, free copies were given out of a limited edition, printed – as was the association’s custom – in a special dust jacket. Burgess had devised a jacked which showed a charming lady, Miss Belinda Blurb, ‘in the act of blurbing’ – shouting out the title of the book and the name of its author. ‘YES, this is a “BLURB”!’ said the headline. The accompanying text was full of unbelievable praise: ‘When you’ve READ this masterpiece, you’ll know what a BOOK is.’ (Continue reading here.)

In More Forensics and Fiction D.P. Lyle, M.D. answers such intriguing questions as:

• How do hallucinogenic drugs affect a blind person?
• Will snake venom injected into fruit cause death? 
• How would you perform CPR in a helicopter? 
• What happens when someone swallows razor blades? 
• How long does it take blood to dry? 
• Can DNA be obtained from a half-eaten bagel?

The book is a useful and entertaining resource for writers and screenwriters, helping them find the information they need to frame a situation and write a convincing description. From traumatic injuries to the coroner’s office, the questions and answers are divided into five parts, making it a compendium of the incredible information that lies within the world of medicine and forensics.

Here's a peek:

The Police, The Crime Scene, and the Crime Lab
by D.P. Lyle M.D.

What evidence might link my killer to the rural site where he dumped the corpse?

Q:  I am in the midst of my latest Monk novel. I’m looking for a way to tie a murderer to the location where he dumped a body: a hiking trail in the forest.  He committed the murder at night, hid the body near the trail, then went back the next morning and placed the body on the trail so it would be discovered.

Lee Goldberg
Author of The Walk and Mr. Monk on the Road

A:  Why not employ a forensic botanist to make the connection? If the dump site was in an area where a certain type of plant or tree grew, the crime lab could find plant fragments, seeds, pollen, etc. on the victim and on the perpetrator’s clothing. For example, he could have pine pollen in his clothing, which could match pollen found on the victim, the victim’s clothing, and at the dump site. Pollen is tiny, easily overlooked, and settles into fabrics and remains for some time.  (Continue reading here.)

> Order online from IndieBound or Amazon 
> ENTER TO WIN a copy of More Forensics and Fiction

The “Hook” Must Catch Your Reader
by Jacqueline Harmon Butler and Louise Purwin Zobel

Your narrator won’t operate in a vacuum. A good travel piece has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Unlike the traditional inverted pyramid of a newspaper story, where the most important facts are told in the first paragraph, with decreasingly important facts spelled out in succeeding paragraphs to allow for hasty cutting from the end, the travel feature story is a unified entity, and can only be shortened through paragraph-by-paragraph or sentence-by-sentence or word-by-word deletions.

A travel article’s beginning should be sparkling, exciting, compelling: a hook that induces the reader -- and the editor -- to read on. (Continue reading here.)

The Idea
by Della Gallton

What’s the difference between a short story idea and a novel idea?

I believe that this is to do with size. Some ideas lend themselves naturally to short stories and some lend themselves to novels. But there are some that would work just as well for both, although of course the treatment would be different. This brings me on to the question that I asked myself when I first began to write novels:

Do I have a big enough idea?

This is tricky to ascertain, but it’s important. What exactly is a big idea anyway? What’s the difference between a short story idea and a novel idea? Is there even a difference? Surely a romance could be either? Yes, it could. A murder could be either too, couldn’t it? Absolutely. We’ve all read plenty of short stories and novels which have a romance or a murder at their heart. So is there actually a difference at all?  (Continue reading here.)