“New Year’s Resolutions are a bit like babies: They’re fun to make but really difficult to maintain.” Anonymous I confess that I’m skeptical about making new year’s resolutions because they are so much easier to make than to maintain. But I do believe that setting realistic goals, whether it’s at the new year or any other…

Read More

This morning Alexa informed me that today is the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock. As Newsweek puts it: “The three-day festival was host to performers such as Jimi Hendrix, Santana, Ravi Shankar, Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, and is considered the pinnacle of the “summer of love” culture of the late 1960s.” I find it…

Read More

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1883) Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome;…

Read More

I survived launch day! I’m delighted to say that yesterday A Family of Strangers went on sale. My husband bought freshly picked garden flowers at the farmer’s market to celebrate, and after a shopping trip for paint for our newly renovated bathroom (half-successful) and a bed frame with a simple headboard (not successful) we went…

Read More

By now many of you have had a chance to read One Mountain Away. If you haven’t, an important element of the novel involves Charlotte Hale, the principal character, who is looking back at her life. Charlotte isolates three things she did in the past that she wishes she could change, then she sets about…

Read More

I’m at the Novelist’s Inc. conference on St. Pete Beach this week, with old friends and new.  I attended last year and learned more in a day than I’ve learned in all the previous conferences I’d ever attended.  So back I went. Ever wonder what writer’s talk about when we’re together? (And I don’t mean…

Read More

Welcome to Sunday Poetry.  If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration of my Sunday blogs here. Today’s poem, Song for Autumn by Mary Oliver seems perfect for mid-October, when the anticipation of winter is always with us, even on days when summer seems to be asserting itself, although briefly. The…

Read More

Welcome to Sunday Poetry.  If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration of my Sunday blogs here. Mother, Summer, I by Philip Larkin, linked here to The Writer’s Almanac online, is a “different” look at summer’s end.  I’ve posted it this morning after a magnificent set of thunderstorms rolled in across…

Read More

Summertime and the living is, well, BUSY!!  I just taught two classes and need to focus on my next book, so this week, just like on your TV set, you’ll be getting re-runs.  Today and Friday I’m featuring blogs from spring of 2009, when many of you weren’t reading here.  In the spirit of CHUsday, here’s an old…

Read More