The Puffer Fish: Wherein the author flaunts his vocabulary.His father was IRA and his mother was Quebecois, and they had reliquished their mortal coils in the internecine conflagration that ended their conjoined separatist movement, IRA-Q....

Overuse at best is needless clutter; at worst, it creates the impression that the characters are overacting, emoting like silent film stars. Still, an adverb can be exactly what a sentence needs. They can add...

Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half of a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess.