Recipe of a successful novel

Prologue: This post is about the book The Lost Years by Mary Higgins Clark. After I finished writing the following post, I felt that it is one of those rare posts where the overall outlook is not positive. So I decided to do some research on the author and found that there is a good name for the Author out there which included recognition from the Catholic Church. Hence, I am writing this prologue as a disclaimer to mention that I do know that some of the Author’s literary works are highly acclaimed and this post is a “first impression” post on the book. Maybe I will get introduced to other books by the author and have my opinion changed.

How to write a successful, gripping suspense novel?

Make it a murder mystery, and add the following additional elements – extra marital affairs, triangle love, a lawyer, the Catholic Church, Biblical scriptures and Jesus Christ too! There springs a great(?) story.
I just completed reading the book The Lost Years by Mary Higgins Clark. I would have enjoyed the book as a simple murder mystery novel, if not for the futile effort of the author to drag in Jesus Christ and his DNA (Jeez!). There is no context for it in this novel and if the author wanted to involve the large sums of money, she could have considered a painting or the Lost Ark of Egypt etc. (or even dig up something for God’s sake).

Dear reader, please do not think that I am not open to ideas. I welcome them if they can be presented in a credible way. This is the first book from this author that I have read. I should be really persuaded to try another one.

Comments

Your me, my me and the other me. A guide to be at peace with personal growth

This article is not a direct address to a problem statement, but a journey with me to certain philosophies that I have entertained in my quest for personal growth. There is a short and effective way to look at personal growth which I will come to in this article, one that I believe will help you to be more closer to peace with the practice of personal development. I am thankful to many people in my life, for instilling in me a desire for personal growth in my life. Both my parents have always been open to learning and cared to share some of their struggles with difficult choices and dilemmas associated with scenarios. A few school teachers stood out in vocalising their own personal learnings and set an example by embracing the incompleteness in spite of not being required to do so. I was fortunate to have attended a school that celebrated learning and instilled pride, largely thanks to the unconventional principal that held office there. The themes you can notice in these ex...

SharePoint 2013 workflow : The server was unable to process the request

Here, I received another SharePoint 2013 workflow error. This time the workflow was not able to send emails and the following error was being shown Retrying last request. Next attempt scheduled in less than one minute. Details of last request: HTTP Unauthorized to http://sitename/_vti_bin/client.svc/web/lists/getbyid(guid'guid') Correlation Id: id Instance Id: id Fortunately I came across this post which gave me the answer http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/89101/failed-to-retrieve-the-com-class-factory-for-component-with-clsid-sp-sprequest Solution 1: In InetMgr, go to advanced settings for Security Token Service Application Pool and change "Load User Profile" to true. Recycle application pool. Reason 2 and Solution 2 : There could be another reason for this error. The workflow authentication can fail if the user executing the workflow (this will be the user initiating the workflow) is given permission through active directory group and the co...

Think like a leader : 5 steps to making decisions

A big part of any leadership role, be it team management or managing a large portfolio, leaders are expected to provide decisions on various matters. Leaders would want their teams to be empowered in decision making, and making good decisions comes from preparation and practice. So, How do we make good decisions? Here is a cheat card of 5 steps to enable you to make good decisions. Let us take a hypothetical example. e.g. You would like to organise training for a few members of your team. Convert the activity to a business case and find the concepts This is the most difficult step. More often than not, as employees in an organisation, we expect us to be guided through a problem at hand. This is where thinking like a leader makes a person stand out. Instead of someone and receiving a decision we can look at the factors and concepts that will affect the scenario. Let u...

Small Talk - Blog by Houratious Albert

Search This Blog