On November 4-7, 2010, I will be hosting a fiction-writing retreat at the Sharon Wilson Center for the Arts in Brookfield, Wisconsin. A retreat conjures up visions of deep breathing and leisurely ...
Gentle Readers: Shuck Your Ears Here’s a thing that good people will come to blows over: sweet corn. A Palin Republican and a Biden Democrat won’t turn snippy quicker than someone from Wisconsin and someone from Long Island deba...
A Book, A Comforter, An Open Window One of the best things about summer is having a vacation, with the time to read. But, like many people, especially those of us who plan to retire about eight years after our own death, I don’t vac...
Too Much Information
ot long ago, I wrote a note to an acquaintance. It was late. I was exhausted. It seemed that nothing more could go wrong – although more than fifty years on this globe have taught me the truth of ...
How I gave it up for "Precious" It wasn’t easy. There was the jealousy. The novel Push by Sapphire was published in 1996, the same year as my first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean. I remember, because there was a News...
My kids start school in the dark at 7:50 a.m. They ride the bus to school for about an hour. They arrive home at 4 p.m., or, if they have after-school activities, 6 p.m. They eat dinner. They h...
Well, the holidays have come and gone and most of us have recovered from our injuries. My daughter was able to finally free her curling iron from the plastic case. We don’t think she’ll need stitc...
In the New Year, let’s all have a new attitude – a cool new way of talking about women. Let’s make it just like the way we talk about men, all the time and always have. I’m not being CRANKY. I’m no...
Although I first felt guilty, it ended up being fun. My eldest son longs for my Kindle, which is a software and hardware platform used to read e-books and other digital media. When a lucky bit of ...