Father’s Day History
Father’s Day is a special day of the year that we celebrate fathers around the world. Even though this is a holiday that we celebrate every year, there are few…
How to Write a Suspenseful Thriller Novel
In case you didn’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). With authors all over the country participating, it got us thinking - how does one go about writing…
Evolution of “The Pharm House”
How did I come up with the story and title for The Pharm House? My first attempt at writing a novel length story was during graduate school. It was science…
The Borgias
Speaking of Toxicologist (as in Nicholas Harding in The Pharm House), any aficionados of The Borgias out there? As a toxicologist, of course I knew who the Borgias were…
What is a Toxicologist?
Nicholas Harding, the protagonist in my first novel, The Pharm House, is a toxicologist by training, like myself. When I inform most people that I’m a toxicologist, I often receive…
The Power of Poisons
A couple of years ago, when I saw that the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was running an exhibit entitled, “The Power of Poisons”, I just had…
Cute and Venomous
“Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.” - Paracelsus When most of us think of venomous animals,…
The Toxicology of The Terror
Above – HMS Terror shipwreck In my previous blog (The Terror of The Terror), I shared with you my minor obsession with the doomed saga of The Franklin Expedition in…
The Terror of The Terror
Have you ever experienced a story, be it a television show or series, a movie or novel that gets inside your head and…
Character Building: Psychopath vs Sociopath
In recent decades, storytellers through movies, novels and television have put two seemingly sexy and fascinating pop psychology terms into our popular vocabulary – psychopath and sociopath. Both of these…