Novelist, Playwright, Doodle-ist
I love spring. Especially after a cold winter. It’s not so much the milder temperatures. It’s the birth—the rebirth. The trees—their leaves turned brown and fell off. So they spent the fall and winter having nothing to clothe them and keep them warm except the memory of the sun and the leaves. The flowers went…
Like many of us, I was a shy kid. It was hard for me to make friends. I know now—I was just an introvert trying to build one-to-one relationships in a world of group settings. We didn’t talk about “feelings” in my family, so I had to figure my own way around it. One day…
Mama used to tell this story about how I came home from first grade in hysterics. The teacher said we were going to read the next day and I was horrified. How was I supposed to read? I didn’t know how. I insisted Mama teach me that very night so I’d be ready. She tried…
Robert Dugoni opened the Surrey conference I just attended. “On this day, I write,” was the ending phrase of his speech. If you’d like to hear it, please click here. It is inspirational. Thanks to Robert Dugoni, I began the conference reminded of why I write. Thanks to Robert McCammon, and Robynn Sheahan, and Russell…
We all do what we feel we have to at any given moment and those actions we cannot justify, we rationalize. Notice I didn’t say we always do what we feel is right. There’s a big difference. BESIDES . . . what’s right for you could easily wrong someone else (see my post What’s your…
Some of my writer friends listen to music while they write. Not me. The tune, the words, the meaning, the associated emotions–too much of a distraction. See, to me, each song is a story in itself. That story pulls me away from the one I’m working on. But . . . on occasion, I’ll hear…
My cousin, Ken, has a favorite story about our Granny. He says when he was little, he used to sneak up on her to scare her. One day, my aunt caught him. “Don’t scare your Granny like that!” she scolded. Now, you and I both know that my aunt was afraid Granny’s old heart couldn’t…
Cyrus Driskoll had evolved. You may have met him at one time or another. He lived up the street or around the corner or even next door. He charmed the girls, shared his best toys with the boys and primarily did what his parents and teachers told him to. Cyrus wasn’t perfect. He was just…
I was an overweight kid until tenth grade. I wish I could say I shrank in size then, but I didn’t. That was the year Ms. Gandy – my Lit teacher- made each of her students read three works by fifteen authors of our choosing. Aldous Huxley was one of the writers I picked and,…