Peg Herring, Mystery Author

We all know that comparisons spice up speech and writing. There are similes, which use "like" or "as." Tennessee Ernie Ford had a million of them. One of my favorites is "She's as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs." And there are metaphors, like "Love is a battlefield." Well done, comparisons imprint on the reader's mind. Really good ones make me pause to appreciate the creativity involved. But there are also badly-done comparisons. Some are just tired: He was as dead as a door nail. Others are new  but not necessarily effective: She looked like my cousin Maxine when she's hung over. I have a program that shows me where I've used trite sayings in a manuscript. Sometimes I keep them, like if a character is the type of person who talks that way. Other times I take them out, wondering how they slipped in in the first place. Here are some deliberately bad comparisons, just for giggles. The lit

I'm kind of bad at selling things (which is odd because my dad was a used car salesman. He wasn't the stereotypical one, though, and worked hard to find the best car for the money for each customer.) Anyway, even with years of watching people sell things to other people, I can't make myself tell readers that my books are amazing and will change their lives. Nor can I follow the advice of one writer I met who said, "When people come up to your table at a signing, shove the book at them so they have to take it into their hands. They'll be embarrassed to put it down, so they'll buy it." Really? I'd be embarrassed to be that pushy. So here's the deal. It's the holiday season and people are looking for gifts. If you know a mystery reader, you might consider giving one of my books. I've listed below the first in each series, and I'm giving the Kindle versions away over the next month on Amazon. I won't hide my motive: if a person re

I was the kind of kid who didn't question much about my schooling. If somebody said "This is the way things are going to be," I went along with it. It had to do with the times, of course. Teachers were kings and queens in their classrooms, and they made rules that suited their tastes. Lately, I've been thinking about a teacher I had who wasn't exactly the ideal educator. I was in upper elementary school, and up to that point, I'd been appreciated by all my teachers. I didn't make trouble, I did my work to the best of my ability, and I smiled when they told jokes, because I was always paying attention. At the beginning of the school year, this woman called me and another girl to her desk to tell us she saw that we'd gotten all A's so far in school, but we shouldn't expect that to happen now. According to her, no one deserved all A's. My classmate and I were dismayed, but as I said, kids accepted the teacher's word as law back then.

This is a re-post from 2011. Just not up to being clever right now. I know that language changes over time. It has to. I know that clinging to the old ways is futile and might make me seem cantankerous or even silly. But it was my job, for three decades, to guard the language, to see that people under my care used it clearly rather than sloppily, thinking about what they wanted to convey as well as what other people might make of it. So I'm going to list some things that seem to me worth keeping in our language. PLEASE KEEP distinctions between similar words. People who are aware of the differences listed here are disappearing, yet there is good reason for keeping their separate meanings.                 nauseated/nauseous-People become nauseated when they encounter something that is nauseous.                 might/may-I might call and ask you if I may take you out to dinner.                 farther/further-He went farther than anyone else to further grammatical a

As a teacher, I met lots of kids who misbehaved from time to time. What was interesting was parental reactions. It boiled down to two types. When presented with an instance of a child's disruptive actions, the helpful parent said something like, "That won't happen again." Most of the time, it didn't. Unhelpful reactions took several forms: "It's not true." - I'd walked into the girls' bathroom and seen their daughter with a lit cigarette in her hand, standing in a cloud of smoke. (I must have misunderstood, or maybe I need my eyes checked.) "Someone else started it." Frequent reaction to fights. "It isn't that big a deal." - This was in reaction to her son peeing on another kid because he wore ragged clothes. She actually said, "He's just a ___", naming a local family living in poverty. "Other kids did the same thing and got away with it." This excuses your kid's behavior how? I co

My grandmother died on my birthday in 1968. We couldn't wish her back, since she'd been in a lot of pain for a long time. Later, I helped Mom clean out her house, and we came upon her sewing basket. For some reason I asked if I could have it, and my mother said yes. I still have it. I think of her every time I take it out of its cupboard, though I can't think of a single time I saw Grandma sewing. It's hers, and that's enough. My other grandmother was the type who asked her progeny what they wanted of her things long before she died. One day when I was visiting I told her about my new hobby, refinishing old furniture. Pointing to a table that had always sat in her living room, she explained that as a young woman she too had taken up that task. The classic-style table was cherry wood, she told me, and she had rescued it from somewhere and given it new life with elbow grease and varnish. "Maybe you'll want it when I'm gone," she said, and I readi

Long ago, I had a conversation with my dad that was a little unusual. He wasn't much for talking about feelings, but what he said often comes to mind when I take my daily walk. John and I had lived in the city for the first few years of our marriage, but once we finished college, we wanted to move "home." My parents had bought property across the road from the family farm to add planting/pasture acreage, and there was an old, half-finished house there we'd played in as kids. We called and asked if they'd sell us the house, and they readily agreed, making us a very sweet deal. That was good, because the house needed work. I was lucky John is so handy, and he was lucky I'm willing to serve as gopher, painter, and fetcher of cold libations. Forty-plus years later we can't say the house is finished, but it's comfortable and we're used to its eccentricities. What I found when we moved to the property was that I couldn't get enough of walkin