I had to make an appointment with my Self, the “come hell or high water” type. And now I’m finally here with my Self―BITCHOK (butt in the chair, hands on keyboard), an acronym I’ve borrowed many times from young adult author Cassandra Clare. There’s no way to fool the true Self, but wow did I […]
[I quite recently wrote this prose and read it for a Unity service. Spring ― I’m ready! Bring it!] The cold and bare limbs of the trees wave in the chill wind as if whispering goodbye to Winter. Stark fingers of branches jab at me, demanding, Look! Look inside! Take an honest view into the […]
This is not a post about a book or a book that is now a movie. It is just me here acknowledging the passing of a writer who was also an artist and musician, but best of all my sister, Paula. She made her transition, her way home as some say, this last Sunday morning. […]
Getting Personal on Changing Comfort(s) Stress and Familiar Comforts My year has been woven with grief and its associated emotions, debilitating flu, the annoying presence of shingles, and agent query rejections. When stress hovered like a Charles M. Schultz’s Pig Pen dust storm, I reached for favorite comforts in the name of self-care. I binged-watched […]
I write from here in southern New Mexico (neither new nor Mexico, as they say around here) about characters in a made up town on the west coast of the United States. I’m calling the location southern Oregon. How do I write from here about the goings-on in a lighthouse and its estate while hunkered […]
I spent many days in my childhood with Star Trek. Like lots of us, I often came home from school to an empty house. I didn’t much notice the emptiness and like my fictional character, Georgie Jones, I wasn’t lonely because there were Star Trek reruns. It was fantastical and dramatic, yet there among the […]
What close connections pull fictional characters Georgie Jones and Luther Andersen together, aside from the little matter of a prophecy? Grandma and Grandpa Jones Luther is a lighthouse keeper, professor, and Georgie’s eventual mentor. He’s also a long-time family friend. A man of indeterminate age, Luther knew Grandma Jones’s aunt Betty before Grandma was even […]
Georgie Jones is not a balker by nature. She chooses instead to be willing—or at least willing to be willing. Willing to Act Early in the story and from the safety of a willow tree in her dad’s yard, primary character Georgie recalls intolerable behavior back at her old home in Starkton. She was held […]
Recently I was hit with the need to relax and do nothing in an effort to relieve stress and make way for healing (shingles, for crying out loud). I don’t know about you, but being told to do nothing seemed like a dream. But it turns out that to do nothing is harder than you […]
Coming Face to Face with Your(My)self You may not expect to come face to face with yourself when writing fiction. After all, it is fiction. Though some writers may not come face to face with themselves, I’ve come to learn many do, and I’m one. What do I mean by coming face to face with […]
