Mystery – July 10

“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”- Sir William Blackstone, born this date in 1723. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist must choose between letting a person your protagonist knows to be guilty go free or implicating a person your protagonist knows to be innocent.

Mystery – July 9

“Sometimes there is no darker place than our thoughts, the moonless midnight of the mind.”- Dean Koontz, born this date in 1945. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist, amid a crowd, is alone with her/his most horrifying thought.

Mystery – July 8

“Like art, love, and pornography, noir is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For the purposes of the book and my longtime working understanding and definition of it, noir stories are bleak, existential, alienated, pessimistic tales about losers — people who are so morally challenged that they cannot help but bring about their own ruin.”- Otto Penzler, born this date in 1942. Writing prompt:...

Mystery – July 7

“Government takes away a certain amount of liberty and in some countries it takes away all of liberty. And it will, everywhere, if people who fight government do not fight government any longer.”- William Kunstler, born this date in 1919. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist learns that someone your protagonist knows is guilty will get away with the crime because the government...

Mystery – July 6

“We put on our tights to put on the world.”- Burt Ward, born this date in 1945. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist gets an earnest, annoying sidekick.

Mystery – July 5

“Pure philanthropy is very well in its way but philanthropy plus five percent is a good deal better.”- Cecil Rhodes, born this date in 1853. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist comes to believe that a fabulously rapacious criminal who escaped punishment and has rehabilitated his/her reputation by using his/her ill-gotten gains to do good works is doing bad works, too.

Mystery – July 4

“Look at the Astors and the Vanderbilts, all those big society people. They were the worst thieves — and now look at them. It’s just a matter of time.”- Meyer Lansky, born this date in 1902. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist is bested by an antagonist motivated by socioeconomic envy.

Mystery – July 3

“In the fight between you and the world, back the world.”- Franz Kafka, born this date in 1883. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist gives up.