I’ll let you in on a secret: not all authors have the best spelling, grammar, and punctuation. That’s why we need editors. In fact, Midnight Splash was nearly perfect. A reader reported finding ONE typo. That’s pretty good when it comes to the 104K+ words that make up the story.
But this isn’t a grammar lesson. Grammar is a set of accepted rules that govern how language is used. I would amend that by saying grammar is a set of accepted rules that govern formal written language. Grammar often goes out the window when people are talking to one another.
Accent, colloquialisms, slang, and other modifiers make it into everyday spoken language much faster than it becomes acceptable in written language. Dialogue isn’t all no-holds-barred, but you certainly have more flexibility.
When was the last time you heard a child or teenager speak in full, grammatically correct sentences? When was the last time you spoke with someone and used slang or other regionally-understood language?
Dialogue should reflect how humans speak. Having every character speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences would be boring and mechanical. You’d probably put the book down after the first scene of dialogue.
Even though dialogue communicates things – characters’ feelings, needs, wants, or gives us peeks into discussions that move the plot forward, authors have a little extra creative license when it comes to contractions, bad grammar, misused words (if your character doesn’t know the difference between ‘affect’ and ‘effect’ have them say it and have the group or person they’re with correct them).
Prose is the main form of communication in any book. A story told completely through dialogue would be exhausting. When will these people shut up and let the story unfold? I didn’t count the number of words of dialogue vs. the number of words of prose in Midnight Splash, but I can tell you my editor was a stickler when it came to the details outside the quotation marks.
I personally find that writing dialogue comes fairly easy for me. I like listening to my characters talk, and seeing how their words move the plot along. New characters and new facts can be introduced through dialogue. A phone call to the forensics lab can reveal the fingerprints on the piece of evidence don’t belong to the person the detective expected. Prose could do the same, but with the dialogue of that phone call we get the news along with the character reaction.
Forcing the ‘camera’ into a room and giving a look at what’s going on inside is less natural. It can give an overall idea, but without dialogue, it’s just a room. That room might become important later, but the characters interacting in that space or talking about it or inside it make that room come alive as part of the story.
There’s bound to be someone who’s a stickler for grammar in spoken language. But when it comes to fiction, inside the quotation marks is where the fun is at. Outside the quotation marks is where business is conducted.
If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet, you’ve at least heard of a VPN, or Virtual Private Network. They offer greater online privacy, safer browsing, or the ability to access websites and streaming services only offered to other countries. I knew that much. I’ve personally used a VPN before, but never really understood how it works.
As I develop new story ideas, I begin with the basics: research. When there’s something technical or unfamiliar I need to know, I look into it. One of those unfamiliar topics is Cybersecurity. Hopefully the research doesn’t alert the FBI agent assigned to me (every writer has one, you know).
A VPN is a way to create an encrypted (I’ll be researching more about that, too) connection between your device and a remote server. A typical visit to a website means:
Your device → Website (like keriwriter.com), routed through your ISP (Cox, Comcast, etc.), which gives your device a specific address that identifies it everywhere.
VPNs allow you to sit at home in the US and access your favorite British TV shows directly on the British streaming service by substituting a British address, but they’re for more than masking your address to watch a little television. They offer privacy and security a single connection can’t, making sensitive data (think credit card numbers, passwords, business data) harder to obtain.
Another but: they don’t make you invisible. While your internet service provider might not be able to see what you're doing through the encrypted connection, the VPN provider may have access to some of that information.
My biggest discovery: you can use more than one! Your internet traffic can travel through a single server, or it can pass through several in different countries before reaching its destination – in a matter of seconds. You could connect to a VPN server in Michigan, then, if the service supports multiple “hops,” route your connection through Canada, Switzerland, and Singapore before landing in England. The end website logs your IP address as being in England.
Imagine trying to trace that connection back to the person sitting in Michigan! It's not impossible, but it's more complicated than looking up a single IP address. Plus, depending on the VPN services involved, some of the information needed to trace the connection might not even exist anymore.
I'm not sure how much of this research will actually find its way into a novel for you to read. It’s definitely informing my writing. And I've probably given my FBI agent another reason to keep an eye on my search history.
Did you know this about VPNs? Do you use VPNs? Let’s talk on Facebook!
Midnight Splash is now a work of art! At least the cover is. The WHAM art gallery in Surprise, Arizona has chosen the cover of Midnight Splash to be a part of its “Walking Through Words” display. The gallery chose a number of Arizona authors and artists for this opportunity. Last Sunday I dropped off the framed poster and a framed description for display.
The installment runs now through November 28, 2026. WHAM is located at:
16560 N Dysart Rd,
Surprise, AZ 85378
If you happen to be in the area – stop by and have a look!
Hi, I’m Lincoln. You may have met me already, but in a very limited capacity. I’m a lawyer in the Glass area. I haven’t been practicing as long as some of the others. Violent crime isn’t usual for this town, so I was surprised to hear about the Glass Murders. Yes, I represented someone. It’d be odd to be a lawyer in the area and not have represented someone.
I could tell you stuff like education, work, and whatever else comes in a professional bio, but I hear this blog thing is about telling you about me as a person. So, um. Yeah.
I’ve been out of law school for three or four years now and work for one of the bigger firms just outside Glass. I’m not a Glass resident, so I really didn’t know the scale of this case and what it meant to the community.
Me as a person? When you go to law school and pass the bar, that’s basically your life. Law is what fuels you, and most of your old hobbies and activities get set aside. Because you’ve disappeared into your dorm room for hours of studying rather than going to the latest social events, your friends write you off as the nerd always doing homework. Eventually the invites stop. And after graduation, it’s hard to convince people you’re available again.
I’m not lonely or alone, it’s just that I don’t see friends or family very often. I’m single with no kids, so there’s no one even home when I get home. Except Souffle, my ten-year-old orange cat, and Lucy my black lab. She’s five. Taking care of them takes up some of the time I’d be spending with people – but it’d be taking up the same amount of time even if I did have a regular social life. Lucy still needs to be walked and let out for potty breaks, both of them still need regular food and water, and Souffle’s litter needs to be changed. Those things don’t just go away because I have a date or am meeting friends. Whether I did it before or after doesn’t change the fact that the thing needs to get done.
I did have a long term relationship for a while. Then she got an opportunity across the country she just couldn’t pass up. Since I couldn’t go – my priorities were here – we decided to split instead of doing a long distance thing. Neither of us was heartbroken over it and we both moved on. I saw on the Glass Creek Chronicles’ Life Events page that she got married.
Um. When I do get time to do the stuff I like, I like to play basketball. I was on my high school team, but I wasn’t the all-star or anything. I just like it. I read. I like sci-fi and fantasy. They’re an escape from the real world. I do have a small group of friends I hang out with. We do dinner every now and then, and one of them has a Super Bowl party every year. None of us are the club type, and a couple of them are married anyway. We’re beyond the clubbing years. When we really have the time, someone will organize a trip. But those aren’t very frequent. Who can travel these days? Let alone gather a bunch of friends at the same time.
Anyway. Now it sounds like I’m complaining when I’m really not. I’m just rambling about life while I think about what to tell you.
If you haven’t met my professional side yet, you can do that in the book by the writer of this blog.
