I first “met” Lee Lofland through an online email group, Crimescenewriters. His comments and answers to questions others asked, to create realistic plots and characters, gave me tons of material I can use some day. After hearing he was a writer, too, I had to know more.

Lofland brings his experience as a veteran police investigator, who worked his way from an officer in Virginia's prison system, then a sheriff's deputy, a patrol officer, and a detective to his book Police Procedure and Investigation, A Guide for Writers. According to his web site, Lofland solved cases dealing with narcotics, homicide, rape, murder-for-hire, robbery, and ritualistic and occult crimes. He was an undercover officer and even a narcotics K-9 handler. He’s certified in the U.S. Department of Justice, Virginia State Police Academy, and the DEA, as well as continuing to be certified in Crime Scene Management and Crime Scene Investigations.

I am a big fan of Debbie Macomber's books – especially the series based in A Good Yarn knitting shop on Blossom Street. In fact, I enjoyed the books in that series so much that I have begun to knit because of them.

When I heard that Ms. Macomber was publishing a book called Knit Together, well, I felt I had to read it. I put my name on the library waiting list and got my copy a couple days ago. I nearly gave it back to the librarian when I found out it was an inspirational book and not a book on knitting.

Laura Schellhardt's Screenwriting for Dummies is the first book I have read on screenwriting and it is definitely a good introduction.

Screenwriting for Dummies is a thorough how-to guide to screenwriting in five parts. In the first one, the reader is encouraged to learn to think visually, and the author gives useful tips on how to prepare for that.

In the second part, Schellhardt deals with structure and the explanations are followed by examples. Advice is given also on how to develop one's idea into a story, how to construct dynamic dialogue, and there is also a full chapter on character building.

One of my favorite books is Cooking with Dogs--because as long as I have been able to cook, there's always been at least one canine in the kitchen. As long as I can recall, I've lived in a house with dogs. I've had a dog of my own since my sister was sixteen and was given a poodle instead of the car she yearned for. (Without a stick shift, Suzette wasn't appealing to my sister. She was dead-set on four wheels, not four legs. So the dog just sort of defaulted to be mine, even though I was only four at the time.) My grandmother had a "gift" regarding dogs--she never met a dog she didn't like, and every dog liked her. Maybe it's genetic? I once accidentally and completely ruined Mr. T, a trained attack Doberman because he wanted to be one of my pack of basenjis, but I will tell that story another time and another place. Suffice it to say that when Amberquill came out with a book Let's Talk Dogs, I leaped at the opportunity to review it.

Nowadays, so many books are written for writers that this makes it difficult for a young author like me to choose one. However, Carolyn Howard-Johnson's book, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't, stands out from the crowd. Not only is she an instructor at UCLA's Writers' Program, but you can come across her name almost everywhere, which clearly shows her expertise in marketing and self-promotion. This is no coincidence. She has many years of experience both as a publicist and as an author, promoting her own books, This Is The Place and Harkening, which became award-winning best-sellers.

Though the title is misleading, The Xenophobe's Guide to the Italians has little to do with Xenophobia. It is one of the books in a humorous British nonfiction series introducing the reader to different countries and different cultures, which, according to the publisher, are almost guaranteed to cure xenophobia.

There are a great many good reads in the series including, among others, the ones on Japan, France, the United States, and even one on Britain. The aim of these books is to make the reader familiar with the peculiarities of certain countries, describing the good and bad habits of each nation, and, though often exaggerating these, always giving a positive picture of the nations concerned.

Doctor Cynthia Kayabaker runs herself out front as an expert in, if all else fails, gathering data for an expose. What makes this piece interesting is that she succeeds. I liked it. The Definitive Guide to Sexual Encounters is a compendium of hot vignettes that twist the reader around a little, and then picks them up and shakes them out with the ‘summary’ at the end of each experience. From an in-depth ‘tale’ inspired by Erica Jong’s “Zipless Sex” to a first romp, his and hers, and then on to a myriad of sexual encounters at their most colorful, Kayabaker takes the reader on a roller coaster of eroticism. It is all about a sexual exchange, any, and all, of which don a different cloak and minister to a different nature.