I wrote this short story quite a few years ago in between edits of Conduct in Question. Sometimes I think that for a novelist, writing short stories can be similar to a painter making sketches for a large canvas. Have a look around the site. Enjoy.

The Life She Wanted

Martha Myles dusted the flour from her hands and wiped them on her apron. She found the beaters at the back of the kitchen drawer and pressed them into the electric mixer. Her new cookbook was propped open on the counter. With reading glasses perched on her nose, she stared at the recipe. Endless fine print ran across the page, obscuring what ought to be a simple task. (more…)

I sometimes say the first draft of a novel is the most satisfying to write. When the creative spirit gallops free as a mare in the fields, kicking up its heels, you know the work is going splendidly! But when it’s not, your spirit [creative or otherwise] drags along like a lame donkey hauling a cart of manure. Life can be unmitigated hell. (more…)

It’s a marvellous “high” seeing those three hundred pages stacked up on your desk-the first draft! How long did it take? Three months, a year, a decade? I remember when the last page chugged out of my, by then, wheezing printer that I gazed at that first draft in awe for at least ten minutes. It was the first glimpse of my new-born.

But how did it get there? It’s important to give that some thought, especially now that the real work of revising lies ahead. What did I learn from completing it? (more…)

As I said the other day, I thought I’d post a few articles about my musings about writing. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Sometimes critics speak of a writer’s voice. But what do yousuppose they mean?  I think of it as a goal to be achieved on a very long road. It’s that uniquely personal “way” you have of expressing yourself to the world in word and thought-the sum total of yourself as a human being. You might say it’s the Holy Grail of writing. (more…)

This is the third review by Gina of Bookaholics in which she dares you to read…

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Gina

A Trial of One

by Mary E. Martin

‘Osgoode’ trilogy Book #3

Jenkins is on a frantic search for shares of Elixicorp Enterprises stock, worth over thirty millions dollars, for his elderly client, Norma Dinnick. The shares were originally sold to raise money for research into memory loss in seniors. Ironically, no one seems to remember just where the shares might be. Pursuing Jenkins through Toronto and London, and to the darkened, narrow calles of Venice, is Dr. Robert Hawke, a sinister madman who claims to have the cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

As their chase unravels a decades-old fraud, yet another search is underway for the mysterious Q.

Dorothy Crawford, widow of Jenkins’ law partner Richard Crawford, (more…)